Former President Trump will take questions from reporters on Thursday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, the second straight week that the former president has grabbed headlines by holding a news conference.
The move is partially to try and blunt the momentum of Vice President Kamala Harris heading into next week’s Democratic National Convention. Harris has been riding a wave of energy and enthusiasm since replacing President Biden at the top of the Democrats’ 2024 ticket three and a half weeks ago.
But it also appears to be another move to try and put pressure on Harris for not holding a news conference or a major interview since Biden bowed out and backed his vice president.
“It has been 24 days and Kamala Harris continues to duck and hide from the media – no interviews and no press conferences since she announced,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung emphasized on Wednesday.
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Former President Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 8. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Trump, at his news conference last week at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, continued to insult Harris’ intelligence, arguing that “she hasn’t done an interview — she can’t do an interview.”
The former president’s 2024 running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, has also been criticizing the Democrats’ standard-bearer for her lack of engagement with the media.
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“She doesn’t have any ability to be unscripted,” Vance charged as he answered reporters’ questions following a campaign event in southwestern Michigan. “She sure as hell isn’t giving interviews. She’s not standing before the American people answering questions.”
And he argued that “it is scandalous that Kamala Harris is running from the media. But more importantly, she’s running from the American people. That’s a disgrace.”
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, takes questions from reporters after headlining a Trump campaign event in Byron Center, Michigan, on Wednesday. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Harris, who to date has briefly taken a few questions from the traveling press, has said she will sit for a major interview before the end of the month.
“We will commit to directly engage with the voters that are actually gonna decide this election and that is gonna be complete with rallies, with sit-down interviews, with press conferences, with all the digital assets we have at our disposal,” Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler told CNN on Wednesday.
While Trump took questions for over an hour at last week’s news conference, he used some of his uneven answers to push unproven claims on a bunch of topics, including his repeated yearslong charge that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and the size of the crowd at his Jan. 6, 2021, rally ahead of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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Hours before Thursday’s news conference, the Harris campaign put out a mock email advisory titled “Donald Trump to Ramble Incoherently and Spread Dangerous Lies in Public, but at Different Home.”
And Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer told Fox News that “Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are talking to voters, laying out a vision of the middle class, and letting Americans know they will fight for their freedoms.”
He argued that “Donald Trump can talk to whoever he wants, but he can’t explain away his toxic Project 2025 agenda, speak in coherent thoughts, or offer anything but insults and higher prices to the middle class.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas on Saturday. (Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)
While criticizing Harris over key issues such as border security, crime and inflation, Trump in the past couple of weeks has also continuously slammed the vice president and insulted her during speeches, news conferences and in social media posts.
Sources in Trump’s political orbit tell Fox News that top advisers to the former president are quietly aiming to persuade him to tamp down the insults to Harris and the questioning of the vice president’s racial identity and instead focus on branding her an ultra-liberal and spotlighting her stance on the border, crime and inflation
Trump allies are also publicly pitching the former president to refocus his attention.
“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities,” former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Monday in an interview on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position.”
McCarthy emphasized that Trump has “a short time frame to do it, so don’t sit back. Get out there and start making the case.”
During an interview Tuesday with Bret Baier on Fox News’ “Special Report,” former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — Trump’s top rival from the Republican presidential primaries earlier this year — also had some unsolicited advice for her former boss.
Haley, who reiterated that she wants Trump to win the presidential election, emphasized that “the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It’s not going to win talking about whether she’s dumb. It’s not. You can’t win on those things. The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.”
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Vance, in an interview with Fox News Digital ahead of his campaign event in Michigan, responded to the blunt advice from fellow Republicans.
“I think one of the things people actually love about Donald Trump in politics is he’s not unwilling to speak off the cuff. He says what’s actually on his mind. He’s not always filtered. I think that’s a good thing and part of his appeal,” the GOP vice presidential nominee said.
But Vance also emphasized that “if you look at this race, we’re talking about policy. That’s 90% of what we’re doing. And I think that’s going to keep on happening.”
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire.
