In rambling remarks delivered on Tuesday, a day after he was officially certified as the president-elect, Donald Trump trotted out a luxury real estate developer from Dubai who said he wants to invest in US data centres.
Trump then pivoted to other complaints, including the name of the Gulf of Mexico and apparently blaming Hezbollah for the violent pro-Trump mob that attacked the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.
Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati billionaire and the founder of DAMAC group, spoke briefly at the top of the press conference, telling reporters he intends to invest $20 billion in data centres “catering to AI” across the US.
Neither Trump nor Sajwani offered specifics beyond a vague “first phase” that will take place in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana.
Trump took questions from reporters near the end of the roughly hour-long remarks, during which he pledged to make “major pardons” for people convicted of participating in the Jan 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
Asked if he intends to pardon anyone convicted of violent offences for their actions that day, Trump dodged — instead appearing to blame both the FBI and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, for the violence.
“We have to find out about Hezbollah, we have to find out about who, exactly, was in that whole thing,” Trump said. “Because people that did some bad things were not prosecuted.”
“People that were doing some bad things weren’t prosecuted,” he continued, “and people that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now.”
A HuffPost analysis of Jan 6 cases found that 83% of those sentenced to at least a year in prison committed acts of violence.
Trump later falsely claimed that “the only one who was killed” that day was Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while attempting to enter the Speaker’s Lobby outside the House chamber, where members of Congress were being evacuated.
In fact, multiple people died in connection with the pro-Trump attack, including five police officers.
The president-elect’s press conference also included what appeared to be a stream-of-consciousness series of tangents, which included pledging to “expedite” environmental approval for businesses looking to spend $1 billion or more, and calling America “a horrible place” because of the time it takes to count votes in a presidential election.
Trump also bragged about removing 5,000 US troops from Afghanistan as president while simultaneously voicing outrage at President Joe Biden’s ban on oil and gas drilling in federal waters.
“We had 5,000 people in the Middle East. I took them out,” he said. “Now ... we have people that I can rely on, but the 625 million acres, people can’t realise, that’s like the whole ocean. ... It’s like, it feels like the whole ocean.”
Trump then complained about electric heaters, low-flow water fixtures and the operating agreement for the Panama Canal. He declined to say he wouldn’t use military force to attempt to take control of the Panama Canal or Greenland.
Continuing on that thread, Trump promised to rename the Gulf of Mexico because “we do most of the work there.”
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” he said.
