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BEDMINSTER, New Jersey — Donald Trump’s advisers wanted him to speak on the economy. And surrounded by tables full of supermarket fare on Thursday, for a period, he did.
During a press conference at his New Jersey golf club, Trump railed against Vice President Kamala Harris’ price control proposals as a “Maduro plan,” called the Inflation Reduction Act a “con job,” and rattled off inflation data on everything from baby formula to cereal.
But about halfway through his nearly 90-minute remarks, Trump once again veered off topic, weighing in on windmills killing birds, repeatedly falsely claiming Harris is a communist, pontificating on the weight of electric trucks and bragging about the audience size of his glitchy conversation on X with tech mogul Elon Musk.
Over and over, he went after Harris personally — a tactic top allies have cautioned against him doing as Harris has closed in on him in the upended presidential race — and when asked about calls to tamp down on the attacks, he suggested he won’t stop anytime soon.
“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her,” Trump said. He added, without providing evidence or explanation, that he was “very angry at her that she weaponized the justice system against me.”
“They want me to be nice. But they’re not being nice to me. They want to put me in prison,” Trump said.
Trump did not announce any new policy proposals during his speech. But he made sweeping claims about being able to reduce energy and electricity prices by at least half within the first 12 months of his administration — a goal he acknowledged the previous day he might not reach — and said he would open up tracts of federal land for housing construction.
“We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now,” Trump said. Trump said he planned to “take off some of the restrictions and regulations” and “stop costly supply chain disruptions.”
Trump’s remarks on the economy came as Harris is expected to call on Congress to pass a federal ban on price gouging as part of her economic platform to lower grocery prices and everyday cost in a speech on Friday in North Carolina.
“Now Kamala is reportedly proposing communist price control. She wants price controls, and if they worked, I’d go all along with it, but they don’t work. They actually have the exact opposite impact and effect,” Trump said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Harris’ campaign said Trump “huffed and puffed his opposition to lowering food costs for middle and working class Americans and prescription drug costs for seniors before pivoting back to his usual lies and delusions.”
“No surprise, Trump doesn’t want to defend his agenda,” said campaign spokesperson James Singer.
Trump — despite losing ground against Harris in recent polling — has kept a narrow edge over Harris on the economy, but it has shrunk significantly from the commanding lead on the subject he held over President Joe Biden.
Still, he claimed Thursday that Harris was a more ideal opponent for him — a remark that was at odds with comments made by his advisers and his own acknowledgment of the initial positive response she has received from the public.
“I think she’s going to be, in many ways, easier to beat than Joe Biden,” Trump claimed, repeatedly referring to her as “radical” and using the same description to describe her newly picked running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“He wants tampons in boys’ bathrooms,” Trump said of Walz, referring to an initiative in the state to provide the products for transgender students. “It’s terrible. It’s terrible. But that’s the person that she picked.”
He falsely claimed that “virtually 100 percent of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants,” adding that he heard the growth was “actually beyond that number, 100 percent,” in an effort to discredit economic improvements under Harris and Biden.
It was Trump’s second press conference in a week, and the former president and Republicans have criticized Harris for not sitting down for a formal interview since a June 24 MSNBC interview about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 and Harris took the top spot on the ticket the same day.
In front of Trump’s Bedminster club, the Trump campaign displayed posters reading “price increases since Kamala Harris took office” along with the percent price increase for food items like cereal and bakery products.
Trump joked he was going to take some of the groceries back to his cottage on the property.
As often happens at Trump events at Bedminster, club members in polos and shorts wandered over to watch the event. Some supporters who lined up to watch the press conference could be heard jeering as Trump rattled off economic numbers and laughing when he insulted Harris as “not smart.”
Following Trump’s press conference, Jewish Republican leaders, influencers, and major donors gathered in a ballroom at the club for an event on fighting antisemitism. Both Trump and Miriam Adelson, the Las Vegas billionaire and Trump donor, addressed the crowd. The New York Times recently reported that Trump sent angry text messages to Adelson about the people running her super PAC, Preserve America.
On Thursday, Trump and Adelson walked out on stage together smiling.
“Shalom, Mr. President,” Adelson said to Trump.
In the speech, Trump painted Harris, whose husband is Jewish, as a radical who was “pandering” to antisemitism in the Democratic Party and claimed that if she is elected Israel will be “gone.”
“The toxic poison of anti-Semitism now courses through the radical Democrat party. I mean, this is a radical, radical group of people. I never thought I’d see that either … instead of expunging this hatred, Kamala Harris is pandering to it,” Trump said.
