policy
PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump held an hour-long news conference Wednesday during which he reiterated his intention to debate Vice President Kamala Harris, mocking her while repeating old falsehoods and sharply responding to questions on the keenness surrounding her campaign.
As Trump spoke to reporters at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, ABC announced that Trump and Democratic nominee Harris had agreed to a presidential debate on Sept. 10, organising a highly anticipated face-off in an already unprecedented presidential election. Trump said he had proposed three presidential debates with three television networks in September.
Trump again insisted there was a “peaceful transition of power” in 2021 and again attacked Republican rivals equivalent to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, whom Trump has sharply criticized since Kemp refused to support his false theories about election fraud. But in greater than a dozen questions from reporters, Trump sought to attract a contrast with Harris, who has not held a news conference since becoming the likely Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race.
Trump's decision to seem on ABC, just days after he posted on his social media account that he wouldn’t appear on the network, marks a highly anticipated moment in a campaign during which Biden's disastrous performance within the last debate triggered his withdrawal.
“I think it's very important to have debates,” Trump said Thursday. “I'm looking forward to the debates because I think we need to get things right.”
There was no immediate comment from Harris' campaign team.
Thursday's event was Trump's first public appearance since Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Trump called Walz a “radical leftist.”
“There's never been anything like this between her and him,” Trump said. “There's certainly never been anyone as liberal as these two.”
He has repeatedly claimed that Harris will not be intelligent enough to debate him. Harris, for her part, has tried to impress Trump right into a debate, recently telling an audience in Atlanta that if he has something to say about her, he should “say it to my face.”
Trump was visibly disturbed when asked about Harris's support and her newfound enthusiasm for the Democrats, and dismissed an issue about his more relaxed campaign schedule as silly.
Trump says he has not “refocused” his campaign despite a brand new opponent, a dynamic that some Republican strategists have privately complained about.
When asked what benefits Harris possessed, Trump said: “She is a woman. She represents certain groups of people.”
Trump has repeatedly – and falsely – accused Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, of downplaying her black heritage.
Trump said abortion wouldn’t be a serious issue within the election campaign or within the consequence in November.
He stressed that the problem is “a much smaller issue” for the reason that Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion services and returned control of the problem to state governments. But the problem is widely seen as a general election risk, and Trump cited states like Ohio and Kansas which have since voted to guard abortion rights.
Trump also said he expected Florida to “take a slightly more liberal path than expected” in the case of voting on repealing the abortion ban later this 12 months. However, he didn’t answer the query of how he would vote.
Trump argued that Democrats, Republicans and “everyone” were completely satisfied with the outcomes of the 2022 ruling, which overturned the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.
But Trump's actions throughout the Republican Party suggest he knows Democrats have already capitalized on Republican opposition to abortion rights and will accomplish that again this fall. Trump single-handedly ensured that the Republican platform adopted on the 2024 convention in Milwaukee doesn’t call for a national abortion ban, and he has repeatedly said that hardliners within the party could bring down the Republicans in November.
The court's decision, which got here months before the 2022 midterm elections, is usually cited as a reason Democrats performed significantly better than expected within the House and Senate elections. And Democrats have sharply attacked Trump in paid ads, blaming him and the justices he appointed for overturning Roe.
Donald Trump falsely claimed in the course of the press conference that nobody was killed “on January 6,” the date in 2021 when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol during Congress’ efforts to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was shot and killed by a police officer as she climbed through a broken portion of a Capitol door in the course of the violent riots that led to a breach of the constructing.
Certainly, Trump has often mentioned Babbitt's death when lamenting the treatment of those that first attended a rally outside the White House that day after which marched to the Capitol, where many clashed with police and eventually entered the constructing.
“I think these people were treated very poorly. When you compare that to other events in this country where many people were killed,” Trump said Thursday, adding: “Nobody was killed on January 6th.”
He also falsely claimed that his speech at a “Stop the Steal” speech before the riots drew more people than the famous March on Washington in 1963, the enduring event at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.___
image credit : www.boston.com