Donald Trump tried Thursday to explain away his apparent staycation amid a tightening presidential race, but unfortunately for the former president, his numbers just didn’t add up.
Ever since Trump’s rally in Atlanta this past weekend, the former president has been lying low at home. Meanwhile, his running mate, J.D. Vance, has seemingly been sent to follow Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz across the country, to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
During a press conference from the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, Trump was asked about his apparent pause in public appearances. He didn’t take it well.
“You have not had a public campaign event for nearly a week now; tomorrow you’ll be in Montana, which is not a swing state,” said one reporter. “Some of your allies have expressed concern that you’re not taking this race seriously, particularly—”
“What a stupid question,” Trump interjected.
“At a time where there is enthusiasm on the other side. Why haven’t you been campaigning this week?” the reporter asked.
“Uh, because I’m leading by a lot and because I’m letting their convention go through,” Trump said, implying he had taken a step back before immediately contradicting himself. “And I am campaigning a lot.”
Trump then claimed that he’d kept busy working on “commercials that are at a level that anybody’s ever done before.”
The Republican nominee also said that he’d been doing remote interviews.
“I’m speaking to you on phones, I’m speaking to radio, I’m speaking to television. Uh, television is coming over here,” Trump said. “Excuse me, what are we doing right now?”
Earlier this week, Trump called in to Fox & Friends to push the baseless claim that Harris had picked Walz out of antisemitism against another contender, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, but he couldn’t get through it without reviving his own offensive comments about Jewish voters.
Trump then criticized Harris for not speaking more with the press. “She’s not doing any news conferences. You know why she’s not doing [them]? She doesn’t know how to do a news conference. She’s not smart enough to do a news conference,” Trump said Thursday.
This claim seems to be a new line of attack for Trump and Vance, who made a comment about it Wednesday on the tarmac in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Someone close to Harris’s campaign told Politico that there was little “incentive” for Harris to speak more with the press. “She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out,” they said.
As for Trump’s claim that he’s “leading by a lot,” that’s not necessarily clear.
When listing recent polls that had him ahead, Trump cited a recent Rasmussen Reports survey published Thursday, which found that Trump was leading 49 percent to 44 percent. Rasmussen was recently dropped from the national poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, after it was determined to be too right-leaning to be considered reliable.
Trump cited a CNBC poll published Thursday that found the former president to have a two-point lead over his opponent. He also mentioned an MSNBC poll that placed him ahead, but such a poll did not appear to exist.
While Trump claimed he’d taken the lead in swing states, an Ipsos poll published Thursday found that the two candidates were neck and neck, with Harris taking a slight lead. On Wednesday, two key national poll aggregators found that after months of struggling, the Democratic Party’s candidate had overtaken Trump in the polls.
Trump is well aware that he’s beginning to struggle in the polls—apparently, it’s driving him nuts.
