Former President Donald Trump‘s press conference at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey featured a roughly 46-minute monologue with frequent attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris while repeating key topics from the campaign stump.
This is Trump’s second press conference in about a week as he aims to pressure Harris into sitting down for a substantial press interview, which she has so far avoided. Last week’s press conference was held at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. The former president claimed Harris is “not smart enough” to face media questioning.
Trump has struggled to adapt to a newly energized Democratic ticket and party after President Joe Biden suspended his campaign last month. The former president, flanked by a table full of food and coffee, blasted Harris as a “radical-left person” who “wants to put price controls all over the place.”
In a surprise moment of kindness toward journalists, Trump praised CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper for their hosting duties during the June debate against Biden. “I have to say Jake Tapper and Dana Bash were unbelievably straight and honest. I give them a lot of credit for that,” Trump said of the debate where Biden did so poorly he was pressured into bowing out of the race.
Before Trump’s press conference, the Harris campaign mocked the former president in an email with the subject line “Donald Trump To Ramble Incoherently and Spread Dangerous Lies in Public, but at Different Home.”
Citing previous cases where Trump’s preference for incendiary comments overshadowed his message, the campaign warned readers that “Donald Trump intends to deliver another self-obsessed rant full of his own personal grievances to distract from his toxic Project 2025 agenda, unpopular running mate, and increasing detachment from the reality of the voters who will decide this election.”
Here are the Washington Examiner’s five takeaways from the press conference.
Trump tells Israel’s prime minister to end the war
The last time Trump spoke with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was during a 2 1/2 hour meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in late July, Trump told reporters Thursday. The assertion rebuts reporting that the two leaders spoke by phone Wednesday about the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Trump did, however, encourage Netanyahu to hurriedly end the war against Hamas that has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians and led to 115 hostages still in the hands of Hamas.
“He knows what he’s doing. I did encourage him to get this over with,” said Trump. “You want to get it over with. It has to get over with fast but have victory, get your victory, and get it over with. It has to stop. The killing has to stop.”
Officials from the United States, Qatar, Egypt, and Israel are in the midst of high-level negotiations in Doha to bring out a deal that would end the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Trump calls early voting ‘ridiculous’
One day after early voting in Florida, Trump reverted to denouncing the voting strategy even as the GOP is pushing for the base to embrace early voting.
Trump encouraged people who are struggling in credit card debt to vote for his campaign but segued into attacking early voting. “They should on Nov. 5 or sooner, if it’s early voting, which largely it is which is ridiculous, we should have one-day voting paper ballots,” Trump said. “We should have voter ID, and we should have proof of citizenship because people are voting.”
On Wednesday, Trump cast an early vote ballot in Florida as a convicted felon. Trump was convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records, but depending on sentencing in New York and other legal cases, his right to vote could be curtailed.
Trump ‘entitled’ to personal attacks against Harris
For weeks, Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), have poked fun at Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), via Generation Z-inflected memes, harsh campaign emails, and media appearances brandishing the GOP as “weird.”
These attacks, according to Trump, allow him to lob criticisms right back at Democrats. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” Trump said when asked about a more disciplined approach.
“I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president, and I think it’s very important that we win,” Trump added. “And whether the personal attacks are good, bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. ‘He’s weird.’ It was just a sound bite, and she called J.D. and I weird. He’s not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio State, graduated in two years at the top of his class, and all of these different things.”
The GOP has continued to implore Trump to move away from attacks against Harris’s race and gender and focus more on pocketbook issues, to mixed results.
Trump keeps commenting on Harris’s Time magazine cover
In a Monday interview with Elon Musk on X, Trump claimed that Harris’s Time magazine cover reminded him of his wife and former first lady, Melania. Two days later, Trump brought up the magazine cover again at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina.
“And now they’re putting her on the covers of Time magazine with an artist sketch. They don’t use a picture, they don’t use a picture, they use an artist sketch,” Trump said as the crowd booed. “I want to use that artist. I want to find that artist. I like him very much.”
Thursday marked the third time that Trump publicly referenced the cover. “What was that all about? The whole thing is crazy. I just want to win for the country,” Trump said. “Some people say, ‘Oh, why don’t you be nice?’ But they’re not nice to me.”
Trump’s openness to Nikki Haley
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley recently slammed Trump’s attacks against Harris as “whining” and urged the campaign to focus on the liberal policies that Harris has endorsed and times pivoted away from.
When asked about Haley’s comments, Trump appeared agreeable to his former primary rival joining him on the campaign trail.
“Sure,” Trump said when asked about Haley as a campaign surrogate. “I think that we’ve done very well. I think that we’re hitting a nerve. I think this is a different kind of a race. All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s going to destroy our country.”
The former president then segued into discussing how he defeated the South Carolina lawmaker in her home state during the primary season.
“I beat her in her own state by legendary numbers, and I get along with her fine. I appreciate that she endorsed me and all of that,” he said. “I think, relatively to what they’re doing and how radical they are and how, in many ways how sick they are. I think I’m doing a very calm campaign.”
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Trump has spent several campaign events attacking Harris but also engaging in rambling moments that diluted the impact of his criticisms. “I’m a very calm person, believe it or not. If I wasn’t, probably wouldn’t be around anymore you know,” he emphasized.
But ultimately, while Trump appreciated Haley’s advice, he said, “I have to do it my way.”
