Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he has focused his campaign on personal attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democrat opponent, because he is angry about what she has done to the country and how she and the Biden administration have weaponized the justice system against him.
Trump spoke during a news conference, which aired live on Newsmax and simulcast on the Newsmax2 online streaming platform, at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club. It was his second news conference in a week as he seeks to make himself more available to the media than Harris, who has yet to hold an informal news conference or give a media interview since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democrat ticket last month.
“As far as the personal attacks, I’m very angry at her because of what she’s done to the country,” Trump said when asked about GOP allies who’ve pressed him to temper his more personal attacks in favor of a more disciplined and issue-focused message.
“I’m very angry at her that she’s weaponized the justice system against me and other people,” he said. “Very angry at her. I think I’m entitled 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 will be a terrible president. And I think it’s very important that we win. And whether the personal attacks are good or bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally.
“Think of it, they don’t want me to be a little bit nasty. They want to put me in prison. Me. They want to put me [in prison]. It’s never happened before in the history of our country. It’s happened in third-world countries, but it’s never happened here. And they’re in danger because you create a precedent for doing that. And once that happens, that’s a really bad thing.”
Trump said he and Republicans have taken a lot of abuse from Democrats and the mainstream media, even though all he wants is what is best for the country.
“With all of the abuse we have taken from the fake news media, all of this horrific abuse we take, and all I want to do is make the country great, all I want to do is have strong borders and good education,” he said. “We want to have choice for education. So important, so many different things. You would think it would be the other way [around]. We rebuilt the military. We did so many great things, but that’s the way it’s been for Republicans, and I guess more so for me than anybody in history.
“And that’s OK because we’re leading in the polls, for the most part. We were leading Biden by a lot. But I think when she’s exposed, I think we’re going to beat her by a lot more than we would have beaten Biden by because he had a little group of people that had been voting for him for a long time. She doesn’t have that. People don’t know who she is.”