WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump’s first press conference since winning re-election demonstrated once again his ability to dominate a news cycle – and on a variety of fronts.
Trump had organized Monday’s event at Mar-a-Lago to tout a $100 billion investment he negotiated with a major Japanese tech firm. But, by the time it ended more than an hour later, he had stoked a media frenzy with controversial comments on a range of topics – from the potential ban on the social media platform TikTok to the causes of autism and the origins of drones that have been sighted over New Jersey and elsewhere.
In many ways, Trump’s news conference brought back memories from his first term, when the former Republican president frequently entered the White House briefing room to jostle with reporters and with his responses control the daily headlines.
But Monday’s atmosphere appeared more cordial. He stood at a lectern alongside SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son and Howard Lutnick, his pick for Commerce secretary and also the co-lead of his transition team. Looking at ease, Trump said his 2024 transition, so far, is going a lot easier than his first one after his 2016 victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
“The first time everybody was fighting me,” Trump said. “This time everyone wants to be my friend. I don’t know. My personality changed or something.”
Trump quickly segued from one topic to another, sometimes answering the questions asked of him and at other times choosing to go off on his own. His event went on for so long, in fact, that it cut into the scheduled start time for President Joe Biden’s prepared remarks about a new national monument in Newcastle, Maine, with Interior Secretary Interior Deb Haaland.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Trump’s post-election presser:
President-elect Donald Trump delivers remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., December 16, 2024.
A lifeline for TikTok?
Trump created fresh questions on Monday about how his administration will handle a potential ban of TikTok after telling reporters that he had a “warm spot” for the social media platform.
TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, is staring down a mid-January deadline to sell the app. The video site, popular with young people, will disappear from app stores and the web in the U.S. if it doesn’t.
Congress imposed the deadline in bipartisan legislation earlier this year out of concern that the platform posed national security concerns.
A person arrives at the offices of Tik Tok after the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of the short-video app or face a ban, in Culver City, California, U.S., March 13, 2024.
But Trump said he believed the social media app helped him gain ground with pivotal young voters in the 2024 election and would “take a look,” at the ban, which would go into effect the day before his inauguration.
“TikTok had an impact, and so we’re taking a look at it,” Trump said of the app, which around 170 million Americans use. “I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart. I’ll be honest.”
Autism, Big Pharma and other glimpses into Trump’s health agenda
Trump spoke at length during the conference about how his administration would handle hot-button health issues, saying he has “very brilliant people looking at it” and that he has been conferring over dinner with industry titans including the leaders of Pfizer and Eli Lilly.
The president-elect also vowed to lower drug prices by targeting middlemen in the pharmaceutical business who he says are profiteering off average Americans. And he expressed support for the polio vaccine, even as his pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and allies have continued their overall vaccine scrutiny and skepticism.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, arrives for meetings at the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 16, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Trump said he’s heard that the number of autism cases has dramatically increased from more than one in 100,000 about 30 years ago to “one in 100” now. “There’s something wrong,” he said, “and we’re going to find out about it.”
Kennedy, a former presidential candidate turned Trump backer, has come under fire for his anti-vaccine positions and spread of misleading or false information, including refuted claims linking vaccines and autism diagnoses.
But Trump said Monday that he thinks Kennedy is “going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he’s got a very open mind, or I wouldn’t have put him there.”
Drones everywhere, including above Trump’s Bedminster estate
Trump accused the Biden administration of keeping the truth about recent drone sightings from the American public, and said he’s postponing a trip to his Bedminster estate and golf course in New Jersey because of them.
For the last month, New Jerseyans have reported odd lights in the sky at night, a rash of reported drone sightings that has attracted the attention of local residents. These photos were taken on Dec. 8 in Toms River, N.J.
“The government knows what is happening,” Trump said of the drone sightings over many states, though he declined to say if he had been briefed by government officials on them.
“Look, our military knows where they took off from. … They know where it came from and where it went. And for some reason, they don’t want to comment,” Trump said without offering specifics.
He added: “They’re very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won’t spend the weekend in Bedminster. I decided to cancel my trip.”
Rebuilding the border wall with Mexico
Trump also returned to one of his favorite campaign topics, the border wall with Mexico. He accused the Biden administration of selling off unused portions of sprawling structure and threatened legal action to stop it.
“We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall we already have,” Trump said. “It’s almost a criminal act.”
The site of ongoing state-sponsored border wall construction where Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham is to hold a news conference on November 26, 2024 in La Casita-Garciasville, Texas.
“We spent a lot of money on building it, and we have hundreds of miles that we put up,” Trump said. Now, he claimed, thanks to Biden administration actions he didn’t specify, “We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more, not even talking about the time.”
Trump was referencing a report by the conservative-leaning Daily Wire that features video footage of trucks leaving with wall pieces and remarks from an anonymous border patrol agent discussing the removal and sale of wall materials taken from three spots in Arizona.
“I’m asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall,” Trump said.
The White House did not respond directly to Trump’s comments. But a Biden administration official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity with USA TODAY, disputed the characterization.
The official said the disposal of unused wall materials followed a mandate in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024, which Biden signed into law last December requiring the Defense Department to create a plan to “use, transfer, or donate” the materials.
Firing federal employees who won’t return to work
Trump also vowed to fire any federal employees who don’t physically return to their offices once his new administration begins and pledged to challenge in court a Biden-era agreement allowing for remote work.
“If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed,” Trump pledged.
Trump described as “ridiculous” what he said was a five-year waiver that the Biden administration gave to certain employees, calling it “a gift to a union, and we’re obviously going to be in court to stop it.”
The Social Security Administration and more than 40,000 workers represented by the American Federation of Government Employees union reached a deal earlier this month that would allow most of those employees to continue working remotely two to five days per week.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 5 takeaways from Trump’s first post-election news conference
