U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump held his second news conference in a week on Thursday while his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, made her first joint appearance with President Joe Biden since he dropped out of the race.
Speaking at his New Jersey golf club, Trump was flanked by tables full of grocery items — cereal and coffee, packaged raw meat and milk — as he highlighted his claims about high food prices.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that food-at-home prices increased 1.1% year-on-year, marking the ninth straight month of increases of less than 2%. Although inflation rates have cooled, many Americans remain concerned about higher costs, according to media reports, with some economists noting that consumers have grown more price-sensitive.
During his lengthy speech, which included a number of misleading or false claims about issues ranging from the economy to immigration, Trump said he would get rid of all incentives and mandates that push the U.S. auto market toward electric vehicles.
He also reiterated his criticism of immigration under the Biden administration, in which he overstated figures about the number of people who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during Biden's term.
"Who wouldn’t want to have strong borders?" Trump said. "Who doesn't want to have lower taxes?"
Following the speech, Trump took questions from reporters.
On Israel, Trump repeated his claim that the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel would not have happened if he had been president. Trump said he hasn't spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the prime minister visited Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in July.
"I did encourage him to get this over with," Trump said, referring to the war between Israel and Hamas. "Get your victory and get it over with. It has to stop. The killing has to stop."
Last week, Trump took 37 questions in a 65-minute news conference at Mar-a-Lago, sparring with reporters while relentlessly disparaging Harris' intelligence and ability to lead the country over the next four years starting in January.
On Wednesday, Trump staged a rally in the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina, ostensibly to talk about his economic plans. But then he questioned whether it even was the most important issue in the November election. "I'm not sure it is," he said at one point. "Crime is right there, I think the border is right there."
He also again veered into more personal attacks on Harris, mocking her laugh, saying she has "the laugh of a crazy person." On Thursday, when asked if he felt he should tone down the mudslinging, he said, "I think I'm entitled to personal attacks.”
“I have to do it my way,” Trump said, dismissing the suggestion that he alter his approach.
Race issue
The former president on Wednesday suggested 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 and then become the party's standard-bearer in the 2024 election after Biden ended his reelection bid last month. Biden dropped out after a disastrous debate against Trump in late June and falling poll numbers.
Polls show Harris and Trump are now locked in a tight contest, but with Harris edging ahead in several of the political battleground states that are likely to determine the election outcome. Biden had been trailing Trump by 5 or 6 percentage points when he ended his campaign.
Harris has occasionally answered a handful of questions from reporters tracking her campaign but has yet to hold a full-scale news conference or sit for a one-on-one interview with a prominent news media figure.
The vice president says she is planning to do an interview before the end of August, apparently after next week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where she will accept the party's presidential nomination. Harris had been running for reelection as vice president with Biden until he withdrew from the contest.
On Thursday in Maryland, Harris made her first public appearance with Biden since he quit the race and quickly endorsed her candidacy.
Biden and Harris are touting a new agreement with major pharmaceutical companies to cut the price of 10 commonly prescribed drugs for diabetes, cancer, arthritis and other ailments, a pact that the White House said would save older Americans $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs during the first year of the new price list.
The government's Medicare program provides health insurance for more than 67 million older Americans, but recipients are required to pay 20% of the costs themselves or buy private insurance to cover the portion not covered by the government.
In her remarks, Harris bemoaned high U.S. drug prices, criticizing, in part, the structure of the American health system.
"Medicare was prohibited by law from negotiating lower drug prices. And those costs then got passed on to our seniors," Harris said.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, however, authorized Medicare to start negotiating directly with pharmaceutical companies on drug prices. Harris trumpeted how she cast the deciding vote on the legislation in 2022.
Project 2025
Biden, meanwhile, spoke about Democrats' longtime endeavor to reduce drug prices. "Surprise, surprise, big pharma doesn't want this to happen at all," he said.
Biden also mentioned the harmful implications that Project 2025 — the road map for a second Trump administration produced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — could have on health care.
"They want to repeal Medicare's power to negotiate drug prices, let big pharma back to charge whatever they want," said Biden. "Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: Beat the hell out of them."
During the event, Harris and Biden also praised each other.
"There's a lot of love in this room for our president, and I think it's for many, many reasons," Harris said, while supporters chanted, "Thank you, Joe."
Speaking after Harris, Biden said she would make "one hell of a president."
On Friday, Harris is planning to lay out her economic plans at a rally in North Carolina, a key political battleground state. Aides say Harris will target efforts to curb what she calls "corporate price gouging," especially to cut food costs that are up 21% since Trump left the White House in early 2021 and Biden assumed the presidency.
