BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump invited reporters to his New Jersey golf club Thursday for his second news conference in as many weeks as he adjusts to a newly energized Democratic ticket ahead of next week’s Democratic National Convention.
Hours before the news conference was slated to begin, Trump’s campaign leaders announced they were expanding his staff, bringing a number of former aides and outside advisers formally into the fold. Corey Lewandowski, Taylor Budowich, Alex Pfeiffer, Alex Bruesewitz and Tim Murtaugh will advise the campaign’s senior leadership.
Lewandowski was Trump’s first campaign manager during his 2016 campaign. Budowich and Pfeiffer are moving over from MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC. Bruesewitz produces pro-Trump content for a large social media following. And Murtaugh was the communications director for Trump’s 2020 campaign.
Summer has traditionally been the time for shakeups in Trump’s two prior campaigns. This year’s change comes weeks after the campaign itself was transformed by President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump will meet the press at 4:30 p.m. EDT as he steps up his criticism of Harris for not holding a news conference or sitting down for interviews since Biden made way for her.
The vice president has barely engaged with reporters since becoming the Democratic nominee, though she travels with journalists aboard Air Force Two and sometimes answers shouted questions while boarding or leaving the plane for campaign stops.
In one brief interaction last week, she told reporters she wants “to get an interview together by the end of the month.”
Trump on Wednesday made little effort to stay on message at a rally in North Carolina that his campaign billed as a big economic address, mixing pledges to slash energy prices and “unleash economic abundance” with familiar off-script tangents.
He aired his frustration over the Democrats swapping the vice president in place of Biden at the top of their presidential ticket. He repeatedly denigrated San Francisco, where Harris was once the district attorney, as “unlivable” and went after his rival in deeply personal terms, questioning her intelligence, saying she has “the laugh of a crazy person” and musing 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.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy and immigration, issues that he has put at the center of his case for returning to the White House.
In his news conference last week, Trump taunted his rival, boasted of his crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, and lashed out at questions about the enthusiasm Harris’ campaign has been generating. He spoke for more than an hour and made a number of false and misleading claims.
Thursday’s news conference will be livestreamed on apnews.com.
Cooper reported from Phoenix.
