Trump Dismisses Calls To Focus On Policy, Says He’s ‘Entitled’ To Insult Harris’ Intelligence

Donald Trump on Thursday brushed off calls by fellow Republicans to focus on policy matters and lay off the insults during his presidential campaign, insisting that he is “entitled” to level personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence,” he said during a news conference at his golf club in New Jersey, the second at one of his country clubs in seven days.

The coup-attempting former president, now also a convicted felon, then claimed that he was running a “very calm campaign” and had a clear plan to win. “All we have to do is define our opponent as a communist, a socialist, someone who wants to destroy our country.”

Trump again repeated many of his favorite recent lies, replete with invented statistics. He claimed that mortgage rates had gone from 2% to 10%. In fact, they were about 3% when Trump left office and are now at 7%.

He claimed, with no evidence, that 100% of the jobs created in the last year had gone to migrants who entered the country illegally — and then clarified that the share was actually larger than 100%. He did not, however, explain how this was mathematically possible.

He repeated a claim he has used many times — with zero support — that other countries are emptying their mental hospitals by sending all their patients to the southern border of the United States. “Their population in the mental institutions is way down,” he said.

After claiming at last week’s press conference that a stock market dip was a harbinger of a coming depression, Trump took credit on Thursday for the rebound that had the Dow Jones Industrial Average end the day gaining another 555 points.

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