Joe McConnell
Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for free
The Stories That Matter About Money and Politics in the Race to the White House
Donald Trump has rejected calls to curb personal attacks on Kamala Harris, claiming in a more than hour-long news conference in New Jersey that she was “leading in the polls” and would defeat the vice president by a wide margin in November.
Senior Republicans have urged the former president to tone down his rhetoric against Harris, who has gained a lead in this year’s White House race since replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee last month.
Trump’s primary opponents, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, have said he should spend less time attacking his opponent and focus on his proposals on immigration and the U.S. economy.
But Trump defied those demands on Thursday, telling reporters gathered at his New Jersey golf resort that he was “very angry” with Harris and that “she had a right to personal attacks.”
“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’s going to be a terrible president,” Trump said aVsceker a reporter asked him about advice from other Republicans. “She certainly attacks me personally. She’s even called me weird.”
Trump continued to defend his running mate, J.D. Vance, saying, “It’s not strange. He was a good student at Yale. He went to Ohio State, graduated … top of his class.”
While Harris has enjoyed a surge of Democratic momentum behind her candidacy in recent weeks, Trump has claimed she staged a “coup” to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee. At an event with black journalists, she also questioned the vice president’s run. She recently floated conspiracy theories about Harris faking the size of her rallies.
“Some people say, Oh, why aren’t you nice? But they’re not nice to me. They want me to be in jail, you know,” Trump said in New Jersey, before railing against a justice system that he said had been “weaponized” against him in an attempt at “election interference” by the Democratic Party.
“They don’t want me to be a little bad. They want to put me in prison,” Trump said.
It was revealed Thursday morning that Trump’s lawyers had appealed to a Manhattan judge to delay sentencing in his “hush money” criminal trial in New York until aVsceker the November election. In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 criminal charges, becoming the first president in US history to be convicted of a crime. His sentencing is currently set for September 18.
“This is interference with the presidential election at the state level, and this is a state that always goes for the Democrats,” Trump said Thursday, referring to the Manhattan case.
Have your say
Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump: tell us how the 2024 US elections will affect you
