Donald Trump's Press Conference First Impressions

The Man Does Need To Focus

For a little over an hour, Donald Trump regaled the press at a press conference held at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. His answers were long winded and at times rambling, but they were also filled with a considerable amount of factual assertions.

That being said, there were some important points made:

1. He’s going to keep hitting Kamala Harris hard on the economy. It’s not for nothing he hammered her on her price gouging ban ahead of her announcing it on Friday. How much the media picks up on that is of course problematic, but he’s going to keep hitting her on the economy and it remains to be seen how articulate she will be in response. Trivia note: today in 1971 President Nixon announced his first wage and price controls. Anyone who remembers the economy of the 1970s knows Nixon’s economic plans did not go well overall. Harris is going to have to address some touchy history to successfully advance a “price gouging ban”.

2. He’s not going to ease up on Kamala personally. That’s classic Trump. Harris supporters love to compare him to Hitler, so the “no personal attacks” thing is more than a little hypocritical. Yes it would be nice if both candidates would elevate their rhetoric, but that’s not going to happen from the Democrats, so it’s futile to demand it from Trump.

3. Immigration remains a major part of his agenda. The reality is he’s been clear on immigration since 2015: he wants to keep out the criminal types and the cartel soldiers, while letting in the people who genuinely want to work and contribute to the American society. And he’s making the argument that such requires a system of legal immigration.

4. “Drill baby drill”. This is an ironic message since the Biden-Harris Administration has backtracked on a lot of their anti-energy policies, but the Biden-Harris Administration ran on an anti-enrgy platform and are still wedded to the foolishness of “Green Energy”. His point about wind farms resulting in habitat destruction is quite accurate—Newt Gingrich has a YouTube clip where he has a fun takedown of a college student radical’s proposal for all wind and solar, and he made the exact same points that Trump did.

5. Kamala is going to have to explain away the “$950” theft threshold. California makes theft below $950 a misdemeanor, which has the practical upshot of store clerks and store owners not bothering to call the police for amounts less than that because it makes the offense little more than a traffic ticket. As the Hoover Institute has assessed, that threshold makes that amount of shop-lifting “de facto legal”

6. Israel and Ukraine happened because of Biden weakness. This is a problematic claim, but it is true that Donald Trump took a very muscular message to the Gulf states about taking a strong stand against terrorism (his message in an speech before the assembled heads of the Arab governments: “Drive them out.”) Would a Trump presidency have been less complacent and more able to head off the October 7th attack? That’s monday-morning quarterbacking, but it does underscore the fact that intelligence gathering under Biden completely missed the signs warning of October 7th, as did Israeli intelligence under Netanyahu.
   
   Would Putin have been more reluctant to invade Ukraine as well? That’s hard to say. There was no intelligence failure there—Biden even released the intelligence to the public in January of 2022 in an effort to dissuade Putin from invading, but to no avail. Putin’s gamibt was that NATO would stay completely out of it the way NATO did in 2008 when Putin attacked Georgia and in 2014 when Putin occupied Crimea. Does a President Trump lead Putin to make a different conclusion? Again, monday-morning quarterbacking, but it also underscores the reality that Putin invaded Ukraine largely because he thought he could get away with it.
   
   Trump is consistent on both wars in this regard: he wants the killing stopped. While the actual diplomacy will require far more nuance than that, I support that position: stop the killing.

7. Energy driving inflation. I’ve written a few times on the interrelationship between energy prices and overall consumer prices, and how it shreds the Federal Reserve’s rate hike strategy, so I largely agree with Donald Trump on this point.

   Bidenomics Is BS. Bidenflation Can Be As Well

Be clear on this much: Donald Trump is running a campaign of issues. He’s not just making snarky attacks on Kamala Harris. Even calling her a socialist and a failure is still first and foremost an attack on her record. People should remember this and remember that it is the media that is attempting to turn the conversation to anything but Kamala Harris’ record.

Who Keeps Questioning Kamala Harris' Race?

Donald Trump is quite clear on his vision: a secure and prosperous country. When he says he’d support Democrats if the country was doing well, it’s hard to frame that as anything but that he is truly putting country first.

Would Trump benefit from more focus in his answers? Yes. Making them tighter and shorter would making him more formidable against corporate media questions.

Overall the presser was longwinded and undisciplined. That’s not good and I hope Trump tightens up. But this is the second presser he’s held in a week, and meanwhile Kamala has held none. Her reluctance to engage with the media could prove to be a weak spot in her armor. If it is, Trump is determined to exploit it.