President-elect Donald Trump gave his first press conference this Monday after winning the elections in November. It was in his mansion-club in Mar-a-Lago (in Palm Beach, Florida) after announcing a pact with the Japanese company SoftBank, whose CEO, Masayoshi Son, committed to making an investment of 100,000 million dollars (95,000 million euros) on US soil.
True to his style, Trump spoke a lot, for more than an hour, and about many things, in clear contrast to the reluctance of his predecessor in office, Joe Biden, to meet with journalists. Among other topics, the old and next president touched on issues related to vaccines; to the list of world leaders he hopes to have on the day of his inauguration; and how much it satisfies him to see that companies like Apple are now looking for him to be on good terms with him: “That is one of the big differences between the first and this second time,” he said.
He returned to the project of building a border wall with Mexico, a promise he did not keep in his first presidency. He said he will do it even if it costs him “hundreds of millions of dollars.” “It is a very expensive process,” he said of the fact that steel was then used to raise the boundary. Now, he congratulated himself, advances in technology will allow him to use concrete, which is “very resistant.”
In foreign policy, he focused especially on the situation in Syria. He defined the rebels’ triumph as a “hostile takeover of Türkiye,” in which “not many lives were lost.” “I think Turks are very intelligent… I can say that [el dictador sirio Bachar el] “Assad was a butcher,” he added. He also discussed the mass deportation that he promises for the first stages of his presidency; of the strangest news in recent days, which talks about the mysterious drone overflight in New Jersey (he accused Joe Biden’s Administration of hiding information from the public); and his plans to sue media outlets whose coverage has been critical of him.
The Republican president, encouraged by this weekend’s news that the network ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a Trump lawsuit for defamation, assured that he is considering suing the Pulitzer Prizes for recognizing the newspapers’ investigations The New York Times and Washington Post on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections (which he again defined as a “hoax”); with the CBS network and its program 60 Minutes, because, he said, they manipulated an interview with Kamala Harris shortly before the election; and with the local newspaper Des Moines Registerwhich published an unfavorable poll, and later it was learned that it was totally wrong, with him, the weekend before the appointment with the polls, according to which, the Republican candidate was about to lose the State of Iowa, and with him , the elections. “We have to put the press in order,” he concluded. “The press is very corrupt. “Almost as corrupt as our electoral system.”
He also discussed some of the most controversial appointments to his new cabinet. He defended the ability of Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host beset by scandals over his professional performance and alleged sexual abuse, to lead the Pentagon. And he assured that he trusted that Robert F. Kennedy, the prominent anti-vaccine chosen to lead healthcare, will do a good job, and that he will be “more reasonable than is expected of him.” In that sense, he denied the arguments, defended by Kennedy, that link vaccines with autism. He also promised to cut taxes.
Regarding Luigi Mangione, the suspect of murdering in New York the CEO of the country’s main insurer, UnitedHealthcare, who has become for some a symbol of rebellion against the savage health system in the United States, Trump said: “It’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him. (…) It was cold blood. Nothing more than a horrible, cold-blooded murder. And how people can think [cosas positivas] This guy is… sick. “Something really, really bad.”
Pardon for the mayor of New York?
Shortly before, the president-elect referred to the mayor of New York, Eric Adams. Trump does not rule out pardoning him, because, he added, he considers that he is being treated “quite unfairly” by federal prosecutors. Adams, a Democrat, is charged with federal corruption in a trial scheduled for April. The accusations against him (in total, five crimes of fraud, bribery and collection of foreign donations) have to do with the thousands of dollars in bribes that he allegedly received from Turkish officials. The fact included in the summary that has caught the public opinion the most has to do with a flight on Turkish Airlines in which he was allowed to upgrade to first class. “They also gave me a upgrade on a plane many years ago; It’s probably happened to everyone here at some point,” Trump said.
