Former President Trump said President Biden “had the right to run for re-election” and the Democratic Party “took it away” from him. He called his new opponent, Kamala Harris, the “least admired, least respected and worst vice president in the history of our country.”
Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday afternoon after holding off-the-record talks with major media outlets. Trump’s campaign said the Republican presidential candidate wanted to address the media “while they are already in Palm Beach because he is the most transparent candidate in history.”
Trump said on Thursday that the United States was in “the most dangerous time I have ever seen for our country.”
“We have someone who didn’t get a single vote for president and she’s running and that’s fine with me, but we got Joe Biden and now we’re getting someone else,” Trump said. “I think, frankly, I’d rather run against someone else, but that was her decision.”
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Both the Trump and Harris 2024 campaign teams have released ads attacking each other over their U.S. southern border policies. (Getty Images)
Trump said Harris was “a radical leftist on a scale that no one has ever seen before” and that her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was “a radical leftist who is taking positions that you can’t even believe exist.”
“He’s heavily involved in the transgender world, heavily involved in many different worlds that have to do with security. He doesn’t want borders, he doesn’t want walls. He doesn’t want any kind of security for our country,” Trump said. “He doesn’t mind people coming in from prisons, and neither does she — I guess because she doesn’t care at all.”
Harris officially became the nominee after Biden suspended his re-election campaign and endorsed her despite pressure from the Democratic Party. The Democratic National Committee officially nominated Harris as its nominee this week.
“Joe Biden had the presidency taken away from him, and I’m not a Biden fan,” Trump said. “From a constitutional standpoint, from every standpoint, they took the presidency away from him, and people are saying after the debate he lost and he can’t win.”
“Whether he could win or not, when he had the right to run and they took it away from him and said they were going to use the 25th Amendment,” Trump continued.
Trump said the pressure from his own party and “what they did” was “pretty unbelievable.”
18 DAYS: Kamala Harris has not held a press conference since being named the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“Now I’m running against somebody else, and we’re in the lead. We’re in the lead — so I’m not complaining,” he said. “I’m saying, for a country with a Constitution that we value — we value that Constitution — it’s pretty harsh, pretty terrible to do it this way.”
Trump said he believed Democrats had “voted” or “there was a primary system.”
“But to just take it away from him like he’s a child?” Trump said, adding that Biden was “a very angry man right now.”
“I can tell you he’s not happy with Obama, and he’s not happy with Nancy Pelosi,” Trump said. “He’s not happy with any of the people who told him, ‘You have to go.’ He’s very unhappy, very angry.”
Former President Trump speaks at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on July 31. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Trump said he believed Biden “blamed Harris for this too.”
“He’s trying to put on a good face, but that’s a very bad thing for a country to do,” Trump said. “I’m not a fan of his, as you probably noticed, and he’s had a tough debate, but that doesn’t mean you can just take that away.”
He added: “When you vote, you do something – he had 14 million votes. She had no vote.”
“And it’s crashing,” Trump said.
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“We have a vice president who is the least admired, the least respected, the worst vice president in the history of our country. The most unpopular vice president,” he said of Harris.
Trump also accused Harris of not engaging with the media. Harris has been the de facto Democratic candidate for 18 days and has neither held an official press conference nor given a detailed interview.
Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio, left) greets former President Trump during a campaign rally at Georgia State University in Atlanta on Saturday. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
“She doesn’t give a press conference. Do you know why she doesn’t? Because she can’t give a press conference. She doesn’t know how to give a press conference,” Trump said. “She’s not smart enough to give a press conference.”
Trump said he was “very happy to run against” Harris and said he “hates defending Biden,” but again referred to the Constitution.
“We have a Constitution. It’s a very important document and we live by it. She has no votes and I’m very happy to run against her. From that point of view, I’m not complaining. And I hate to defend him, but he didn’t want to go. He wanted to see if he could win,” Trump said. “They said, ‘You’re not going to win.’ After the debate, they said, ‘You’re not going to win. You can’t win. You’re out.'”
Trump said that after successfully pushing Biden to drop out of the race, Democrats “just picked a person.”
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris appear on the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington, DC on July 4 (Tierney L. Cross)
Trump referred to Harris’ failed 2020 Democratic primary campaign, saying she was “the first one out.”
“She was the first loser. OK. So we call her the first loser. She was the first loser when she was the first to give up during the primary system, during the Democratic primary system, and she gave up. She had no votes, no support and she was a bad debater, by the way, a very bad debater,” Trump said. “And that’s not what I’m looking forward to. But she was a bad debater. She obviously did a bad job. For some reason, she never made it to Iowa back then.”
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Trump said he believes Biden “regrets” appointing Harris as vice president.
“He picked her and she turned against him too. She worked with the people who wanted him out,” he said. “But the fact that you can’t get votes means you lose in the primary system. In other words, there were 14 or 15 people. She was the first one out and then you can be picked as a presidential candidate.”
Trump added: “It seems, actually seems to me, unconstitutional. Maybe it isn’t.”
