PALM BEACH, Florida – donald trump He has long boasted about the size of the crowds at his rallies, but on Thursday, he used an unexpected comparison to argue that it is the biggest draw: Martin Luther King Jr.
“No one has spoken to larger crowds than I have,” Trump said in his press conference in Mar-a-Lago. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he gave his speech, his big speech, and you look at ours, the same property, the same everything, the same number of people.”
Trump was responding to a question about whether he thought the end of his term could be considered a peaceful transfer of power, despite it being marked by the January 6 insurrection.
As he has done previously, Trump said the people who were arrested as a result of the Capitol invasion were treated unfairly. He then spontaneously compared his “Stop the Steal” rally before protesters marched toward the Capitol with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which took place on the National Mall.
Trump acknowledged that official estimates put his crowd size at smaller than King’s, but said he thought there were “more people.”
“But when you look at the exact same photo and everything is the same – because it was the fountains, everything from Lincoln to Washington – and you look at it, and you look at the photo of my crowd… we actually had more people,” he said.
THE January 6 congressional committee estimated Trump’s crowd at 53,000 people, about a fifth of the 250,000 that were estimated be at King’s famous address, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The NAACP on Thursday posted photos of both days on .”
Both Trump advisors and supporters insisted on him focus on the record of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, rather than her race, which he has done explicitly during the past week. That tendency to go off-message, like comparing himself to a civil rights icon, was on full display again Thursday during a wide-ranging, hour-long press conference in which he said Harris was “disrespectful” to black and Indian American voters by identifying as both.
He again unfoundedly questioned if Harris has always identified as black, he called her “not very competent” and attributed her rise in polls to her gender. At the same time, Trump acknowledged that Harris’ presence at the top of the ticket could hurt him slightly among black voters, a demographic his campaign has focused heavily on.
“That changes a little. I’m getting other voters,” Trump said in the ornate living room of his Mar-a-Lago club. “Maybe you know I was doing well with black voters, and still am. I seem to be doing pretty well with black men.”
“I may not get along so well with black women, but I seem to get along very well with other segments,” he added.
Trump was quick to focus about the race of Harris, who has a black father and Indian mother, when it became clear she would replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. This dynamic was highlighted last week by your comments at an event organized by the National Association of Black Journalists. At the Chicago event, Trump baselessly suggested that Harris began identifying as black only because it was politically advantageous. Later that night, at a rally in Pennsylvania, his campaign ran a headline on the arena’s big screen that called Harris the first “Indian-American senator.”
Asked why Harris is doing better in most public polls than Biden, Trump said she “represents certain groups of people” and that the increase can also be attributed, in part, to the fact “she’s a woman.” .
“I see her falling in the polls now that people are finding out that she destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed the state of California with Governor Gavin Newscum,” Trump said, giving a derogatory nickname to Governor Gavin Newsom.
The Harris campaign responded to the press conference in a press release with the headline “Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference.”
“Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell It Was,” the statement read.
The news conference came during a relatively quiet week for Trump, who is holding just one event in heavily Republican-leaning Montana and has found himself in the rare position of being overshadowed by Harris’ emergence.
“What a stupid question,” Trump said flippantly when asked about his lighter schedule. “That [is] because I’m leading a lot.”
Trump went on to say that while he will hold fewer events ahead of the Democratic National Convention this month, his campaign is in heavy rotation with TV ads and he is meeting publicly with the media. unlike Harris.
“I’m doing a huge amount of recording here. We have commercials that are at a level that I don’t think anyone has done before,” he said. “I see many of you in the room where I am speaking to you on the phone. I’m talking to the radio. I’m talking to televisions. Television is coming here.”
“Excuse me, what are we doing now?” Trump added, referring to the press conference. “She is not giving any press conferences. … She’s not smart enough to hold a press conference.”
Trump’s advisers have emphasized the importance of contrasting his record with that of Harris, who they have routinely framed as outside the mainstream, even criticizing supporters who sometimes deviate from the desired message.
A senior Trump adviser said: “Sometimes our allies do us no favors by clarifying differences. So for us as a campaign, we have to make it clear where each candidate stands on the issues that are important to persuadable voters so they have the real information, and we have to spend money on whatever means necessary to do that. ”
Asked if Trump always helps himself by making these contracts clear in his messages, the advisor avoided it:
“I’m not going to comment on that.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
