PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump has long praised the crowds at his rallies, but on Thursday he used an unexpected comparison to say he was the biggest draw: Martin Luther King Jr.
“No one has ever spoken to a bigger crowd than me,” Trump said at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “If you look at Martin Luther King when he gave his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same property, same everything, same amount of people.”
Trump was responding to a question about whether he thought the end of his term could be considered a peaceful transfer of power, even if it was marked by the Jan. 6 uprising.
As he has in the past, Trump said the people arrested in the wake of the Capitol attack have been treated unfairly. Then, unprompted, he compared his “Stop the Steal” rally before protesters marched toward the Capitol to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall.
Trump acknowledged that official estimates put his number smaller than King’s, but said he believed there were “more people.”
“But when you look at the exact same picture and everything is the same — because it was fountains, the whole thing all the way back from Lincoln to Washington — and you look at it and you look at the picture of my. audience … we actually had more people,” he said.
On Jan. 6, a congressional committee estimated Trump’s crowd at 53,000, about a fifth of the 250,000 estimated for King’s famous address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The NAACP released images from both days on the X Channel on Thursday and said of Trump’s mass comparison: “It’s not only completely false, but here’s the more important thing: MLK’s speech was about democracy. Trump’s speech was about dismantling it.”
Trump’s advisers and supporters alike have urged him to focus on the record of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, rather than her race, which he has expressly done over the past week. That tendency to sidestep things like comparing himself to a civil rights icon was on full display again Thursday during a wide-ranging hour-long press conference where he said Harris has been “disrespectful” to black and Indian-American voters. both.
He again unfoundedly questioned whether Harris has always identified as black, called him “barely qualified” and noted that he rose in the polls because of his gender. At the same time, Trump acknowledged that Harris’ presence at the top of the ticket might hurt him a bit with black voters, on whom his campaign has focused heavily.
“It’s changing a little bit. I’m getting other voters,” Trump said from the ornate living room of his Mar-a-Lago club. “You may know that I did well with black voters and still do. I seem to get on very well with black men.”
“It’s possible that I don’t do as well with black women, but I seem to do well with other segments,” she added.
Trump was quick to focus on the race of Harris, who has a black father and an Indian mother, when it became clear that he was looking to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. That dynamic was highlighted last week in his comments at a National Association of Black Journalists event. At the Chicago event, Trump suggested, without justification, that Harris had only come to identify as black because it was politically expedient. Later that night, at a rally in Pennsylvania, his campaign posted a banner on the arena’s big screen calling Harris the first “Native American senator.”
Asked why Harris is doing better than Biden in most public polls, Trump said she “represents certain groups of people” and that the bump could also be partly because “she’s a woman.”
“I see him going down in the polls now that people are finding out that he destroyed San Francisco. He destroyed the state of California with Gov. Gavin Newsom,” Trump said, giving Gov. Gavin Newsom a derogatory nickname.
Harris’ campaign responded to the briefing in a press release titled “Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference.”
“Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell,” says the announcement.
The briefing came in a relatively quiet week for Trump, who is holding just one event in Montana — which is heavily Republican — and has found himself in the rare position of being overshadowed by Harris’ appearance.
“What a stupid question,” Trump said flatly when asked about his lighter schedule. “This [is] because I’m way ahead.”
Trump went on to say that while he will hold fewer events before the Democratic National Convention this month, his campaign will run heavily with TV ads and he will meet with the media in public, unlike Harris.
“I do a tremendous amount of taping here. We have commercials that are at a level that I don’t think anyone has ever done before,” he said. “I see a lot of you in the room talking to you on the phones. I’m talking to the radio. I’m talking to TVs. Television is coming here.”
“Excuse me, what are we doing right now?” Trump added, referring to the news conference. “He doesn’t hold any briefings. … He’s not smart enough to hold a briefing.”
Trump’s advisers have stressed the importance of comparing his record to that of Harris, who they have routinely portrayed as outside the mainstream, even criticizing supporters who sometimes deviate from their desired message.
A senior Trump adviser said: “Sometimes our allies don’t do us any favors to clarify differences. So, as a campaign, we need to be clear about where each candidate stands on the issues that are important to convincing voters so that they have real information, and we need to spend money on whatever means necessary.
Asked if Trump always helps himself by making these deals clear in his messages, the adviser was evasive:
“I won’t comment on that.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
