Trump claims surging Jewish support, suggests those backing Harris ‘get head checked’
In rambling Mar-a-Lago press conference, Republican nominee says he agreed to debate his Democratic rival three times, as ABC announces September 10 date for first face-off
American Jews who support Democrat Kamala Harris for president should have their brains checked, Republican nominee Donald Trump said Thursday, the latest of a series of controversial comments by the former president questioning the sanity of Jews who don’t vote for him.
Trump also told a long-winded press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that he is willing to debate Harris three times in September on different networks, as he tried to win back momentum from the Democratic vice president’s newly galvanized campaign.
The news conference was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.
In a question-and-answer session with reporters that stretched beyond an hour, Trump moved from topic to topic, claiming Harris and Walz were weak candidates who were already dropping in the polls, despite survey numbers showing a Democratic resurgence.
He said support for his campaign from Jewish voters was “way up,” accusing Harris of being “very, very bad to Israel” and “very bad to Jewish people.”
“If anybody I know is Jewish and they would vote for Kamala over me, they should have their head examined,” he said.
He also reiterated his claim that the Hamas massacre on October 7 would not have happened if he was president, claiming that the US and Iran would have been at peace within a week of him returning to the Oval Office.
“We would have been fine with Iran, I was looking forward to it,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly made comments conflating Jews with Israel and questioning the mental health of Jewish voters who support Democrats, while regularly touting his record on Israel during his time at the White House.
“I gave them Golan Heights, I gave them the capital of Israel, Jerusalem, I even built them an embassy,” he said Thursday.
Many of the comments about Jewish voting trends have been met with criticism or condemnation from Jewish groups.
Harris and Walz have headlined rallies in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin this week, drawing tens of thousands of attendees in a fresh sign of how her late entry into the race has galvanized Democrats.
Her rapid rise has sent Trump’s team scrambling to recalibrate their strategy and messaging. Opinion polls show Harris has erased the lead Trump had built over President Joe Biden, and Democrats have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from voters and big donors in a matter of weeks.
As Trump addressed reporters at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, ABC announced that Trump and Harris had agreed to a September 10 presidential debate, setting up a widely anticipated faceoff in an already unparalleled presidential election. Trump said he had proposed three presidential debates with three television networks in September.
Trump said he wanted debates on September 4 and September 25 as well. He did not detail specific terms, such as whether there would be an audience, and it was not immediately clear whether his campaign had made a proposal to Harris’ camp.
The Harris campaign did not immediately comment.
Trump had previously suggested he might back out of the ABC debate, which was scheduled before Harris, the US vice president, replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate less than three weeks ago, upending the contest.
“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Trump said Thursday. “I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight.”
Trump also mocked the size of Harris’ campaign crowds, even though they have matched his of late. He falsely claimed the size of the crowd he addressed on January 6, 2021 – the day his supporters stormed the US Capitol – was as large as those who packed the National Mall in Washington for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
“We actually had more people,” Trump said. “But I’m ok with it, because I liked Dr. Martin Luther King.”
Trump again insisted there had been a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2021 and renewed attacks on Republican rivals like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, whom Trump has harshly criticized since Kemp refused to go along with his false theories of election fraud. In taking more than a dozen questions from reporters, however, Trump tried to draw a contrast with Harris, who has not held a news conference since she became the likely Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
“She can’t do an interview. She’s barely competent,” Trump said, later again calling her “nasty,” a go-to line that he often uses to disparage female critics.
Trump has conducted a steady stream of media interviews, though they are usually with friendly, right-leaning outlets and reporters. On Wednesday, he called into the “Fox & Friends” morning program and took questions from the program’s hosts.
He repeatedly suggested Thursday that Harris was not intelligent enough to debate him. Harris, for her part, has tried to goad Trump into debating and told an audience in Atlanta recently that if he had anything to say about her, he should ” say it to my face.”
Trump grew visibly perturbed when pressed on Harris’ crowds and newfound Democratic enthusiasm, dismissing a question about his lighter campaign schedule as stupid.
Trump said he has not “recalibrated” his campaign despite facing a new opponent, a dynamic some Republican strategists have quietly complained about. He lamented that he isn’t able to face Biden in the election, suggesting that the president was a victim of an unconstitutional plot to dislodge him from atop the Democratic ticket.
When asked what assets Harris possessed, Trump said: “She’s a woman. She represents certain groups of people.”
