Donald Trump made his first televised appearance since Vice President Kamala Harris selected her running mate, speaking at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday.
During the impromptu presser, the former president announced that he had agreed to three debates with three news networks: Fox News on Sept. 4, NBC on Sept. 10, and ABC on Sept. 25.
“We have spoken to the heads of the network and it’s all been confirmed, other than some fairly minor details,” Trump claimed. “The other side has to agree to the terms. They may or may not agree. I don’t know if they will agree.”
ABC quickly clarified that both campaigns had agreed to participate in a debate on Sept. 10 — not Sept. 25 — which had been scheduled before Biden dropped out of the race.
Trump had attempted to back out of the encounter last month as Democrats debated who would replace Biden at the top of the presidential ticket. Instead, the former president requested a debate with his preferred propaganda machine, Fox News.
“He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept. 10,” the Harris campaign said earlier this month, adding that even if Trump skips out the vice president would still “take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience.”
The meteoric enthusiasm surrounding Harris has clearly rattled the Trump campaign. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, one Republican close to the former president has expressed that Trump is “unhappy with the narrative” surrounding Harris, particularly about her crowd sizes.
When asked at Mar-a-Lago about Harris’ blockbuster crowds, Trump ranted that “nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” and claimed that his crowd of supporters on Jan. 6 may have been larger than the crowd who gathered to listen to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
“When [Harris] gets 1,000 people and everyone starts jumping, you know if I had 1,000 people, people would say that’s the end of his campaign,” Trump said. “The enthusiasm is with me in the Republican Party.”
In one tense exchange, Trump lashed out at a reporter who asked him about his absence from the campaign trail in the last week, and concerns he wasn’t taking the race seriously. “What a stupid question. Because I’m leading by a lot,” Trump retorted. The former president’s lead on Harris is slim, if it exists at all, and seems to be shrinking as the vice president gains momentum.
Trump cited the amount of interviews, taped statements, and televised appearances he makes from Mar-a-Lago as part of his campaign. He also leveled several attacks against Harris, particularly against her intelligence. “[Harris is] not doing a news conference,” he added. “You know why she’s not doing it? Because she can’t do a news conference. She doesn’t know how to do a news conference. She’s not smart enough to do a news conference and I’m sorry, we need smart people to lead this country.”
Trump also spoke at length about how the Democratic Party stole the nomination from Biden, falsely claiming it was “unconstitutional.” Despite fantasizing about Biden getting back in the race, he claimed on Thursday that he’s glad to be running against Harris. “I’m not a big fan of his brain,” Trump said of the current president before noting that he’s still smarter than Harris.
Regardless of whether Harris is currently holding press conferences, she seems to be doing quite well, and the former president clearly can’t stand it.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.