U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is holding his second news conference in a week on Thursday while his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, makes her first joint appearance with President Joe Biden since he dropped out of the race.
Trump took 37 questions in a 65-minute news conference last week at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, sparring with reporters while relentlessly disparaging Harris’ intelligence and ability to lead the country over the next four years starting in January. He is holding Thursday’s news conference at his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey.
A day before, 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 personal attacks on Harris, saying she has “the laugh of a crazy person.”
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.
On Thursday, Harris is making 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.
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.
