Donald Trump on Thursday held his first press conference since Tim Walz was named Kamala Harris‘ running mate, and the event featured ambitious claims about the former president’s popularity and disparaging comments about his Democratic opponents.
Trump said his speech on the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, just before the Capitol riot drew a bigger crowd than the one at Martin Luther King Jr.‘s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. He also called Harris a “radical” and said her record is “horrible.”
In the fallout after the news conference, one viral comment on social media suggested that Trump had said women were not “smart enough” to hold press conferences or govern the country.
The Claim
A Friday post on X (formerly Twitter) by public speaker Kenny Akers has been viewed 1.4 million times. It said: “Trump said women are not smart enough to do news conferences and are not smart enough to run this country—operation: ‘Let Him Speak’ is coming along nicely.”
The post included a video from Trump‘s press conference, in which he said: “Excuse me, what are we doing right now? She’s not doing any news conference. Do you know why? You know why she’s not doing it?
“Because she can’t do a news conference, she doesn’t know how to do a news conference, she’s not smart enough to do a news conference, and I’m sorry, we need smart people to lead this country.”
The Facts
From his trials involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels and columnist E. Jean Carroll to the infamous Access Hollywood tape, Trump’s attitudes toward women and his relationships with them have been under a microscope since he first ran for president.
The former president has been accused of misogyny by dozens of Democratic congresswomen, his critics and, allegedly, his former staff.
While these criticisms are a matter of record, the claim that Trump said Thursday that women “aren’t smart enough” to run the country or hold press conferences is not true.
Trump made no such statement during his remarks at his Florida estate, as the X post’s inclusion of the clip from that press conference might imply. The post’s reference to “operation: ‘Let Him Speak'” further implies that his comments were recent, suggesting that Trump’s public remarks during the 2024 campaign could end up distancing him from voters.
Trump did, however, question at length Harris’ abilities as a public speaker. Asked about his relative absence from campaigning over the past week, he replied: “We have commercials that are at a level I don’t think that anybody’s ever done before.
“Plus, in certain cases, I see many of you in the room where I’m speaking to you on phones, I’m speaking to radio, I’m speaking to television. Television’s coming over here.”
He then criticized Harris, saying that she doesn’t know how to do a news conference and that smart people are needed to lead the nation.
“Because our country has never been in this danger before, both economically and from an outside, from an outside perspective, Russia doesn’t respect us anymore. China doesn’t respect us anymore. North Korea, Kim Jong Un, he liked me a lot, he doesn’t like this group,” he said.
At no point did he make a broader point about the ability of women to govern or hold press conferences. Trump has spoken fondly about his female allies in government and Congress and had several female press secretaries while in office.
Newsweek was unable to find examples of Trump publicly or allegedly saying that women could not govern.
Newsweek has contacted a Trump media representative via email for comment.
The Ruling
False
Trump did not say that women were “not smart enough” to run the country. The clip shared on Twitter was from the Thursday press conference in which he criticized Harris. He did not say that women could not govern during this conference or publicly elsewhere.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team
