Trump scheduled to hold news conference at his New Jersey golf resort
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024, in Asheville, N.C. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)
BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump invited reporters to his New Jersey golf club Thursday for his second news conference in as many weeks as he adjusts to a newly energized Democratic ticket ahead of next week's Democratic National Convention.
Trump will meet the press at 4:30 p.m. EDT as he steps up his criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris for not holding a news conference or sitting down for interviews since President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her to replace him.
The vice president has barely engaged with reporters since becoming the Democratic nominee, though she travels with journalists aboard Air Force Two and sometimes answers shouted questions while boarding or leaving the plane for campaign stops.
In one brief interaction last week, she told reporters she wants "to get an interview together by the end of the month."
Trump on Wednesday made little effort to stay on message at a rally in North Carolina that his campaign billed as a big economic address, mixing pledges to slash energy prices and "unleash economic abundance" with familiar off-script tangents.
He aired his frustration over the Democrats swapping the vice president in place of Biden at the top of their presidential ticket. He repeatedly denigrated San Francisco, where Harris was once the district attorney, as "unlivable" and went after his rival in deeply personal terms, questioning her intelligence, saying she has "the laugh of a crazy person" and musing that Democrats were being "politically correct" in trying to elevate the first Black woman and person of south Asian descent to serve as vice president.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy and immigration, issues that he has put at the center of his case for returning to the White House.
In his news conference last week, Trump taunted his rival, boasted of his crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, and lashed out at questions about the enthusiasm Harris' campaign has been generating. He spoke for more than an hour and made a number of false and misleading claims.
Thursday's news conference will be livestreamed on apnews.com.