Trump says he’s ‘entitled to personal attacks’ against Kamala Harris: ‘They want to put me in prison’
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that “I’m entitled to personal attacks” against Vice President Kamala Harris — noting the fact that Democrats “want to put me in prison.”
“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her,” Trump said during a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ — rejecting criticism, including from former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), that he should stick to the issues.
“They don’t want me to be a little bit nasty? They want to put me in prison. Me! They want to put — never happened before in the history of our country. It’s happened in third-world countries.”
Trump used the prompt to tear into Harris, 59, who last month replaced retiring President Biden, 81, as the Democratic presidential candidate.
“I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence and I think she’ll be a terrible president, and I think it’s very important that we win, and whether the personal attacks are good, bad — I mean, she certainly attacks me personally,” he said.
Trump cited the fact that Harris, along with her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have ridiculed as “weird” Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
“She actually called me weird — he’s weird. It was just a sound bite,” Trump said.
“And she called JD and I weird. He’s not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio State, graduated in two years at the top of his class, and all of these different things. And we have this guy that’s running a failed, really, a very failed state, who’s had a terrible career. I mean, you have him saying ‘They’re weird.’ No, he’s a weird guy, and she’s weird in her policy.”
Trump added: “Who wouldn’t want to have strong borders? Who doesn’t want to have lower taxes? … I don’t think people know who she is yet.”
Trump added that name-calling was nothing compared to the quartet of criminal cases that he’s fighting.
“Some people say, ‘Oh, why don’t you be nice?’ But they’re not nice to me,” Trump said.
“They tell me I should be nice. They want to put me in prison. It’s never happened before in the history of our country. I did nothing wrong. I have crooked judges. I have crooked prosecutors, and they’re all Democrats.”
Trump was convicted May 30 on 34 felony charges in Manhattan for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments made in 2016. He’s scheduled to learn his sentence Sept. 18.
Trump regularly notes the New York case was brought by elected Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg, prosecuted by former No. 3 Biden Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo and presided over by Judge Juan Merchan, whose daughter Loren Merchan has worked in Democratic politics, including for Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who was lead counsel in the first impeachment case against Trump in 2019.
Trump faces three other criminal cases — though it’s unclear when or if any will go to trial — including federal and Georgia charges related to challenging his 2020 election loss to President Biden and federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents. A federal justice dismissed the latter case last month, but the Justice Department is seeking its reinstatement.
Trump said that he opposed Republican efforts to prosecute his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified documents with a private email server, but that now Democrats may be “in danger because you create a precedent” in his criminal cases.
“Some people were upset when I did this, but you have to look at it maybe differently now. I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be terrible to put the wife of the president — former president of the United States into a prison?” Trump said at the Thursday press conference.
“I could have done that very easily. She was so guilty. And I said to my people, wouldn’t it be terrible… to take a former Secretary of State who was the wife of the president of the United States and put her into a prison? But that’s what they want to do with me, and I did nothing wrong.”
Haley, the ex-president’s centrist challenger in this year’s Republican primary, argued Tuesday that Trump risked alienating voters by attacking Harris, whom Trump has nicknamed “Laffin’ Kamala” in reference to her uproarious laughter at some public events.
“The one thing Republicans have to stop doing: Quit whining about her. We knew it was going to be her. She’s not going to give an interview. They’re going to hold out as long as they can. That’s their right,” Haley told Bret Baier on Fox News’ “Special Report.”
Haley, referred to as “Birdbrain” by Trump until recently, said “the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes, it’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is, it’s not going to win talking about whether she’s dumb.”
Trump’s use of bold nicknames to brand his rivals has been a fixture of his political campaigns — using names such as “Lyin’ Ted,” “Little Marco” and “Crooked Hillary” against his 2016 rivals before indelibly dubbing the 2020 Democratic nominee “Sleepy Joe.”
