WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump aired plenty of grievances with the courts during a wide-ranging news conference from Mar-a-Lago Tuesday, swinging from topics like energy to foreign policy on the day after the certification of the 2024 election.
Though he opened the news conference by welcoming Hussain Sajwani, the CEO of a Dubai-based development company DAMAC Properties, to announce an investment of $20 billion to fund new data centers along the Sun Belt and Midwest, the rest of the event was quintessential freewheeling Trump as he returned to some familiar themes.
Here are five key topics from his remarks.
The courts and Jack Smith
Trump spent time on one of his most frequent grievances on Tuesday – special counsel Jack Smith and the criminal cases Smith was pursuing against him. Those charges have since been dismissed after Trump won the election, after Smith cited Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
“He is deranged,” Trump said, using a frequent epithet he employs for Smith.
“Jack Smith had cases all over the place,” Trump said. “People were being subpoenaed and lives were being ruined. That’s a sick group of people, and it was all to influence the election.”
Smith indicted Trump in two cases on dozens of charges. One case alleged he mishandled classified information at his Florida home and private club, the other charged him with trying to block Biden’s 2020 victory.
Trump also faced two other criminal cases, a hush money case in New York state court in which he was found guilty of falsifying business records last year, and an election interference case in Georgia state court. The Georgia prosecutor who brought the case was disqualified from pursuing it in a shock ruling from an appeals court late last year.
On Monday, the judge in the New York case rejected Trump’s request to delay his sentencing, scheduled for Friday, and an appeals court ruled the same way on Tuesday.
“He’s a crooked judge they have in New York,” Trump said.
And during Tuesday’s news conference, Federal Judge Aileen Cannon of Florida blocked the immediate release of the special counsel report on Trump’s classified-documents investigation in Florida.
Water pressure
Trump also took issue with low water pressure and opined that gas heaters are cheaper and more reliable.
“When you buy a faucet, no water comes out, because they want to preserve it even in areas that have so much water,” Trump said on a topic that has earned his ire before. “No water comes out of the shower and [the showerhead] just goes drip, drip, drip.”
He continued: “You’re in the shower 10 times as long and no water comes out of the faucet.”
Trump also attacked windmills as a way to generate electricity, as the renewable energy source remains one of his punching bags.
“Windmills litter our country and they’re the most expensive energy in the United States,” Trump said. “They only work if you get a subsidy and the only people that want them are the people that are getting rich off windmills and those getting massive subsidies from the U.S. government.”
Trump cited Massachusetts and argued windmills are impacting whales and the state is finding more whales wash up ashore each year; the implied connection is misinformation, according to researchers.
“The windmills are driving the whales crazy and it’s become a disaster,” Trump said.
Brown University’s Climate Lab found that anti-offshore wind interest groups have been spreading such claims, though scientists say the top causes for whale deaths are the mammals being tangled in fishing nets, being hit by ships, or disease.
Trump pledged to reverse Biden’s ban issued this week on offshore oil and gas drilling.
Annexing the Panama Canal and Greenland
Trump also spoke of America’s soon to be “Golden Age” when he suggested annexing the Panama Canal and Greenland.
He called the Panama Canal vital to the United States given its value to international trade and said the United States must take control of it, falsely saying it is run by China. A subsidiary of a Hong Kong company manages two ports at the canal entrance.
“The canal is leaking and not in good repair, and Panama wants us to give $3 billion to help fix it,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Well, why don’t you get the money from China because China is basically taking it over at both ends.’”
Trump also mused about buying Greenland for national security purposes, a territory of Denmark that’s home to roughly 56,000 people. Trump has publicly toyed with the idea since his first term.
Trump questioned Denmark’s legal right to Greenland and said “they should give it up, because we need it for national security.” He added, ”I would tariff Denmark at a very high level in a plan for acquisition.”
Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., arrived in Greenland on Tuesday for a private visit.
Trump also suggested renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said. “What a beautiful and appropriate name.”
Jan. 6 pardons
On the heels of the four-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the US Capitol, Trump pledged to pardon at least some of those charged with their actions that day.
“We have to find out who exactly was in that whole thing, because people that did some bad things were not prosecuted,” Trump said. “So we’ll be looking at the whole thing, but I’ll be making major pardons.”
There have been numerous conspiracy theories by Trump supporters about the insurrection, but investigations have found no credence to the idea that the rioters were spurred on by outside anti-Trump forces.
There have been more than 1,500 prosecutions in connection with the insurrection, and the Justice Department said 645 of them had been sentenced to time behind bars as of Nov. 6. Defendants are charged with a range of crimes, from misdemeanor trespassing to hundreds of felony cases for assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
Kendall Wright can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @k_wright4.
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