This combination of file pictures created on Aug. 3 shows U.S. Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaking on March 26, in Raleigh, N.C.; and former U.S. president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaking in the first presidential debate with U.S. President Joe Biden in Atlanta, on June 27.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKIANDREW CABALLE/Getty Images
Donald Trump gave an hour-long news conference Thursday in which he recommitted to debating Vice-President Kamala Harris and taunted her while also repeating old falsehoods and lashing out at questions about the enthusiasm her campaign is receiving.
As Mr. Trump addressed reporters at his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, ABC announced that Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee, have agreed to a Sept. 10 presidential debate, setting up a widely anticipated faceoff in an already unparalleled presidential election. Mr. Trump said he had proposed three presidential debates with three television networks in September.
Mr. Trump again insisted there had been a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2021 and renewed attacks on Republican rivals such as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, whom Mr. Trump has harshly criticized since Mr. Kemp refused to go along with his false theories of election fraud. In taking more than a dozen questions from reporters, however, Mr. Trump tried to draw a contrast with Ms. Harris, who has not held a news conference since she became the likely Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
Mr. Trump’s decision to go on ABC, days after posting on his social media account that he would not appear on the network, sets up a highly anticipated moment in an election where Mr. Biden’s catastrophic performance in the last debate set in motion his withdrawal.
“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Mr. Trump said Thursday. “I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight.”
The Harris campaign had no immediate comment.
Thursday’s event was Mr. Trump’s first public appearance since Ms. Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Mr. Trump called Mr. Walz a “radical left man.”
“Between her and him, there’s never been anything like this,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s certainly never been anybody so liberal like these two.”
He repeatedly suggested Ms. Harris was not intelligent enough to debate him. Ms. Harris, for her part, has tried to goad Mr. Trump into debating and told an audience in Atlanta recently that if he had anything to say about her, he should “say it to my face.”
Mr. Trump grew visibly perturbed when pressed on Ms. Harris’s crowds and new-found Democratic enthusiasm, dismissing a question about his lighter campaign schedule as stupid.
Mr. Trump says he has not “recalibrated” his campaign despite facing a new opponent, a dynamic some Republican strategists have quietly complained about.
When asked what assets Ms. Harris possessed, Mr. Trump said: “She’s a woman. She represents certain groups of people.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly – and falsely – accused Ms. Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, of previously downplaying that she is Black.
Mr. Trump takes questions about abortion
Mr. Trump suggested abortion will not be a major issue in the campaign and the outcome in November.
He insisted that the matter “has become much less of an issue” since the Supreme Court ended the federal constitutional right to abortion services and returned control of the matter to state governments. But the issue is widely seen as a general election liability, and Mr. Trump named states such as Ohio and Kansas that have since voted to protect abortion rights.
Mr. Trump also said he expected Florida “will go in a little more liberal way than people thought” when it votes to repeal an abortion ban later this year, but he did not respond to questions asking how he would vote.
Mr. Trump argued that Democrats, Republicans and “everybody” are pleased with the results of the 2022 ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Mr. Trump’s actions within the GOP, however, suggest he knows that Democrats already have capitalized on Republican opposition to abortion rights and could do so again this fall. Mr. Trump single-handedly ensured that the Republican Party platform adopted at the 2024 convention in Milwaukee does not call for a national ban on abortion, and he has said repeatedly that hard-liners in the party could cost the GOP in November.
The court’s decision, issued months ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, is widely cited as a reason Democrats fared much better than expected in House and Senate contests. And Democrats have hammered Mr. Trump in paid advertisements blaming him and the justices he appointed for ending Roe.
Mr. Trump again makes false claims on Jan. 6
Mr. Trump falsely claimed during the press conference that “nobody was killed on Jan. 6,” the date in 2021 when pro-Trump rioters breached the U.S. Capitol amid Congress’s effort to certify Mr. 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 part of a Capitol door during the violent riot that breached the building.
To be sure, Mr. Trump has often cited Ms. Babbitt’s death while lamenting the treatment of those who first attended a rally outside the White House that day, then marched to the Capitol, many of whom fought with police and entered the building.
“I think those people were treated very badly. When you compare it to other things that took place in this country where a lot of people were killed,” Mr. Trump said Thursday, adding “nobody was killed on Jan. 6.”
He also falsely claimed he drew more people to his speech at a “Stop the Steal” speech before the riot than the famous March on Washington in 1963, the iconic event at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.