Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago press conference, August. 8, 2024.Alex Brandon/AP
Have you seen any of those clips from Donald Trump’s rambling press conference this past Thursday? If not, count yourself lucky. Standing at a Mar-a-Lago podium, Trump did what he always does: equivocated, meandered among subjects, spoke in half-sentences full of non sequiturs, and lied relentlessly. Challenging questions were in short supply—a media fail. Then again, maybe just showing up was the bigger fail, given Trump’s inability to engage honestly.
But one has to try. Calling Trump out is our professional responsibility. The women who grilled him onstage at the National Association of Black Journalists conference—Harris Faulkner, Kadia Goba, and Rachel Scott—set a good example.
Apparently not enough of the Mar-a-Lago journalists got the memo.
Their questions weren’t mic’d, so they were barely audible in the video. But I cranked up the volume and listened carefully, transcribing as accurately as I could. Trump took roughly 40 questions. Most were uncritical softballs. Here’s a sampling, paraphrased:
- Does he consider Kamala Harris more talented than Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton?
- Does he think Harris is worse than Biden?
- What does he think about Harris not picking Josh Shapiro for her VP?
- Is he worried about the size of Harris’ crowds?
- Has he followed this whole thing about Harris dating Willie Brown?
- Is his ear fully recovered? Is there a scar?
- Could he talk about his upcoming interview with Elon Musk?
- Was Steve Bannon’s imprisonment politically motivated?
- Would he consider pardoning Hunter Biden?
There was a smattering of policy questions—which is fine, but lightweight. Some examples (these are semi-verbatim; watch the video for Trump’s full answers):
- “Harris supports rescheduling marijuana and says no one should go to prison for marijuana. Do you agree with that?” (“As we legalize it, I start to agree a lot more.”)
- “Do you support continuation of tax credits for EVs?” (“They want everybody to have an electric car. We don’t have enough electricity.”)
- “What do you make of reports that Harris said she might consider an arms embargo on Israel?” (“I’d be against that.”)
- “Did the use of an AR-15 gun by your would-be assassin change your view on people’s access to that weapon?” (“No.”)
- “How will you vote on the Florida amendment [that would codify abortion rights in the state constitution?]” (“I don’t want to tell you now.”)
- “There are other things the federal government can do, not just a ban [on abortion]. Would you direct your FDA, for example, to revoke access to mifepristone?” (“You could do things that would supplement, absolutely…But you have to be able to have a vote.”)
Only a handful of questions were at all confrontational:
- “Kamala Harris’ father is Jamaican. She went to a historically Black college. How has she only recently decided to be Black?” (Trump equivocated and doubled down—again.)
- “What is your response to President Biden when he says he fears there wouldn’t be a peaceful transfer of power if you lose?”
In his response, Trump misleadingly claimed there had been a peaceful transfer of power “last time.” Another reporter, I believe it was Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, came back to that:
- “You think the last time was a peaceful transfer of power?” (No, Trump replied, because the January 6 protesters “were treated very unfairly.”)
- Also Haberman: “When you were president, you pardoned [inaudible] drug dealers and violent felons, including one man who told a rabbi, “I am going to make you bleed.” How is that different from [inaudible]? (“We had commissions…They would recommend to me certain pardons for certain people.” In fact, as Mother Jones has reported, Trump threw the standard clemency process out the window.)
Here are 22 questions—I could easily come up with 22 more—that journalists should be asking this candidate, or at least asking of him. Granted, it might be the last time Trump ever took a question from you, but it’d be worth it.
Partisan divisions
A Pew analysis shows voters are about evenly split in favor of Democrats and Republicans. Yet you’ve called Democrats “treasonous,” “un-American,” “crazy,” “loco,” “rage-filled,” and “the party of crime.” You retweeted a video in which a supporter said, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” You regularly use “us vs. them” rhetoric. Why should voters support a candidate who seeks to divide Americans?
Migrant crime
You’ve gone around claiming that nations are emptying out their jails, prisons, and, in your words, “insane asylums,” sending “millions” of criminals and mental patients across our southern border. That’s a pretty outrageous lie, and your claim that undocumented migrants are driving a crime wave is demonstrably false. Why do you insist on repeating these falsehoods?
School vaccinations
You’ve said that you will defund any school with a vaccine mandate. Are you only talking about Covid vaccines, or also the routine childhood immunizations that prevent catastrophic illnesses such as polio and measles?
Stochastic terrorism
The FBI says it has found no evidence that the man who shot you and others in Pennsylvania was politically motivated. He was, in fact, a registered Republican voter. But you and your campaign surrogates, including your sons, keep saying the Democrats tried to kill you in Pennsylvania—a baseless claim that experts have told Mother Jones will fuel political violence. Why do you and your surrogates keep making this false claim?
January 6
You’ve said you would pardon people who participated in the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, using words like “patriots” to describe members of a mob that beat police officers with hockey sticks, flagpoles, and fire extinguishers; crushed cops in doors; and sprayed them with bear spray. How can you then say you are pro-police and pro-law-and-order?
Taxing tips
You’ve proposed to eliminate income tax on tips. How is that fair to untipped low-wage workers like grocery store clerks and delivery drivers? Would you also support raising the federal minimum wage, which has been stalled at $7.25 an hour since 2009? (Harris, who embraced Trump’s proposal on Saturday, favors raising the minimum wage.)
Dehumanization of immigrants
Your own businesses have knowingly employed undocumented workers over the years for everything from landscaping and maintenance to modeling and hospitality services. Why must you now go around claiming these people you depended upon are “poisoning the blood of our country”?
Mass deportations
Economists question your plan to deport 11 million undocumented people, including otherwise law-abiding families who have been in the US for decades, working, owning homes, and paying taxes. They say mass deportations would shrink the US economy 6 percent over 20 years and cost US workers about 968,000 jobs. We’d lose almost $100 billion a year that those families pay in taxes. The agriculture, construction, and hospitality industries rely on their labor, and migrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. Why do you think uprooting established families is a good policy?
Border policy
Congress recently put forth a bipartisan border bill that gave Republicans much of what they’d long been asking for. It was a huge policy victory for your party, but you put the kibosh on it because, as you admitted, you wanted to use the border issue against Biden. How do you justify putting your campaign ahead of your party’s hard-fought goals?
Family separations
Illegal immigration has bedeviled presidents of both parties. Yet on your watch, migrant parents were forcibly separated from babies and young children, an astonishingly cruel policy with lasting effects on good families. How does showing up on the border, or even crossing illegally, justify such a heartless response—and why does its architect, Stephen Miller, remain in your circle of advisors?
Clean energy
You have vowed to claw back clean energy funding passed under the Biden administration. But that funding has sparked a domestic manufacturing boom in red states. The southern “battery belt” is booming. Shouldn’t a Republican candidate celebrate that?
Dirty energy
You approached oil executives asking for $1 billion in campaign contributions, saying, if elected, you would lower barriers to drilling and make them tons of money. Americans are not blind. Climate change is real and causing increasingly worse storms, fires, droughts, and floods like the ones in the Southeast this week. It’s driving home insurance prices through the roof. How can encouraging more oil extraction be a sensible policy given the disastrous result of burning fossil fuels?
Corruption
The mantra during your 2016 campaign was “drain the swamp.” But your cabinet picks—people like EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, a man openly hostile to environmental protections—were objectively swampy. You and an unprecedented number of your associates have been investigated, charged with crimes, and in many cases convicted. How can you speak of draining the swamp when your administration embodied it?
Project 2025
You flew on a private jet with Kevin Roberts, the architect of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and praised him—and the project—at a Heritage conference. Some 140 people from your administration, including six of your cabinet chiefs, worked on Project 2025. How could you claim you knew nothing about it and that it won’t affect your presidential agenda?
Abortion
By saying abortion should be left to the states, you are in effect supporting the harshest restrictions any state imposes. Some don’t allow exceptions for rape and incest, and even in states with exceptions for a mother’s health, doctors are delaying emergency abortions until their patients are near death. How do you propose to protect these women?
Race
Following up on the earlier race question, Kamala Harris has always identified both as Black and South Asian. You asked, well, “Is she Indian or is she Black?” Don’t you think this “either or” language might be insulting to the 9 percent of American adults who identify as multiracial?
Pandering to Christian voters
At a recent conference, you urged Christians to get out and vote, saying they wouldn’t have to vote anymore after that. “It’ll be fixed,” you said. What will be fixed? Abortion? Elections? Please explain your meaning.
Nicknames
You’ve called your opponent “Laughin’ Kamala,” but it seems like many people appreciate her joyfulness. Do you see laugher as negative? Separately, I’d like to know why you think it’s okay to call her “Kamabla.”
Military service
JD Vance and others in your inner circle have targeted Tim Walz over his military service, but Walz volunteered and served for 24 years. You took multiple deferments from the Vietnam draft, claiming bone spurs based on a diagnosis the doctor’s daughters now say was phony—a favor for your father. You dodged your duty, so how can you justify going after Walz?
Economy
The Biden administration has bested yours on several key economic measures: He’s overseen lower unemployment, more robust wage growth, more new jobs, more domestic manufacturing, higher household incomes, lower child poverty, and fewer uninsured Americans. His big problem has been inflation, but that was also a global problem triggered by the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, price-gouging, and soaring energy prices from Russia’s war on Ukraine. Economic growth was about the same during your two administrations. So how can you say yours was the “greatest economy” while Biden has done a “poor job”?
Foreign influence
How can voters expect you to deal even-handedly with the Saudis when they provided $2 billion in financing to your son-in-law?
Mendacity
Voters are not naïve. Every politician bends the truth and some lie on occasion. But the nation’s fact-checkers can barely keep up with you. You’ve been lying this entire press conference. Why are we even here?
