PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump held his first solo news conference in more than a year Thursday, boasting of his willingness to talk to the press and challenging Vice President Kamala Harris to more debates.
“She can’t do an interview,” Trump said of Harris, speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort. “She’s barely competent.”
“She’s not smart enough to do a news conference,” he added.
With President Joe Biden out of the race, the entire tempo of the presidential race has shifted — at least on the Democratic side. Instead of an 81-year-old president cocooned by his staff, Democrats now have Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, who is criss-crossing the country and holding rallies at a more rapid pace than either party had earlier in this election.
Trump, however, has not changed his pace. Aside from the press conference Thursday, Trump’s big event this week is a rally on Friday in Montana, a state that is not in contention in November.
Trump tacitly acknowledged Thursday that he has started to slip in the polls, but he indicated no plan to change how he’s campaigning. Instead, he focused on hitting Harris for not doing more and said that people’s opinion of her would change once she gets more exposure. The criticism amounts to an acknowledgment that Harris has been controlling the narrative of the campaign for now without having to put herself into unscripted positions — and Trump is eager to end that portion of the 2024 race, which has seen Harris gain support, fill out her ticket and raise a boatload of cash.
“She’s a woman,” Trump said when asked to explain Harris’ rise in polls. “She represents certain groups of people, but I will say this, when people find out about her, I think she’ll be much less.”
He quickly pivoted to portray her as already dropping.
“I see it right now. I see her going way down in polls now that people are finding out that she destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed the state of California along with Gov. Gavin Newscum,” he said, using a pejorative nickname for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Harris has yet to do any formal interviews with the press since Biden dropped out on July 21, and it’s a point that the Trump campaign is starting to hammer her on, underscored by his decision to hold the news conference Thursday. Harris told NBC News outside an event in Michigan that she’s “looking forward” to debating Trump on Sept. 10 but did not answer questions about the two other dates Trump put forward Thursday.
An aide to Harris who is familiar with her team’s thinking on media engagement, as well as another Harris campaign official, told NBC News that Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her new running mate, would like to do a joint interview and that the Harris team understands the need and pressure to do so. They said this week was challenging logistically because of the duo’s swing-state tour.
The Harris aide said Harris and Walz would like to do a joint interview in a “few weeks.” That person said it is “unlikely” that a substantive interview with the pair would happen before the Democratic National Convention but that it was possible.
That person added that Harris and Walz plan to do interviews with local and national traditional legacy media organizations but also with social media influencers on platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.
The Harris aide also noted that Harris did a number of interviews after Biden’s dismal June debate performance defending him. Since Biden dropped out, she has spent much of her time building a campaign, traveling for events and picking a running mate.
After Trump has spent much of the last nine years at the center of national political discourse, his team said it is not concerned about the optics of Harris barnstorming swing states all week compared to their candidate’s light schedule.
“I get the biggest kick out of this — the tempo, blah, blah, blah,” one senior Trump adviser said Thursday morning. “I mean, guys, Kamala Harris has been the Democratic nominee for how long, and she hasn’t been asked one damn question by anybody in the press, and we’re about to head over to Mar-a-Lago to do another stand-up with the boss on a whole set of questions. So the tempo, I mean, the tempo, as far as we’re concerned, has been exactly where it needs to be.”
The Trump campaign is confident that Harris will falter whenever she goes off script. The former president’s top aides showed a reel of Harris slip-ups to reporters during a briefing Thursday at a West Palm Beach hotel.
Former Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a campaign co-chair and longtime adviser to Harris, said the vice president has spent her career “consistently” talking to the media and has no hesitancy in doing so.
“She’s now on a tour to talk directly to the American people,” Richmond said. “And I think the American people want to hear directly from her.”
Since Biden dropped out, Trump has done more than a half-dozen interviews, largely with conservative media. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has done more than 20, focused mostly on conservative press but including some off-camera ones with traditional outlets including NBC News — as well as a few press gaggles.
Late last month, Trump sat down with a panel of reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists, where he had a combative appearance at which he questioned whether Harris was really Black. (Harris is both Black and Indian American.)
Part of the reason Trump’s appearance at NABJ was notable was that he has largely avoided such situations. He has done few mainstream media interviews since 2020 and only sporadically takes questions from reporters at campaign stops. Trump also does not travel with a “pool” — designated members of the media who observe his movements and statements and share their reporting with the rest of the press — which is a departure from what’s normal for presidential nominees.
“He talks to the media all the time, but he’s saying nothing,” Richmond said. “He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter and whether she’s of Indian descent or African American descent. He’s spewing nonsense. So, I mean, he gets to say he talked to the press, but he didn’t say anything. … What he’s doing is having a very public meltdown. The race has changed. He’s not getting his way.”
In terms of press interactions, Harris regularly speaks with reporters off-the-record aboard Air Force Two, a common practice of hers over the last three years.
Harris has generated significant excitement and enthusiasm in the Democratic Party, filling arenas at rallies and bringing in historic amounts of money. But she and her campaign are still working to define her, and how she will be different than Biden when it comes to policy.
“If Donald Trump is so concerned about the success of VP Harris’ campaign blitz, he could, you know, get out there on the campaign trail,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said. “We are more than happy for him to shed a spotlight on his election-losing agenda: terminating the [Affordable Care Act], killing a bipartisan border bill, and supporting a national abortion ban.”
Jonathan Allen and Matt Dixon reported from Palm Beach; Yamiche Alcindor, Monica Alba and Amanda Terkel reported from Washington, D.C.; and Natasha Korecki reported from Chicago.
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