Former President Trump painted a dystopian image of California as crime-ridden, water-starved and flooded with illegal immigrants as a warning about what will happen to the nation if Kamala Harris is elected president.
“I’m here today in California with a very simple message for the American people: We cannot allow Comrade Kamala Harris and the communist left to do to America what they did to California,” he told reporters from his blufftop golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes, with the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island in the background. “The state of California is a mess, with people leaving, and nothing’s gonna stop them.”
Trump said if he is elected, he would stop sending California federal firefighting aid unless Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he referred to repeatedly as “Newscum,” enacted his policy priorities on issues such as taxes.
“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires. And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems,” Trump said. “He’s a lousy governor.”
Despite losing the 2020 presidential by 5 million votes in California, the former president claimed he would win the state if votes were properly counted.
“You don’t have an honest voting system. They send out millions and millions of ballots. They go all over the place,” he said. “You have a very dishonest system over here. If I ran with an honest vote counter in California, I would win California.”
In his first news conference since his debate with Harris on Tuesday, Trump spoke for more than an hour. He repeatedly railed at the moderators of the clash as biased, claiming he won, and also pledged he would have mass deportations if elected. He also took a little time to brag about his golf course.
“It’s world championship course, it fronts on the Pacific Ocean … very few courses front on the Pacific Ocean,” Trump said. “I have the ocean; Pebble Beach has the bay. The ocean’s better than the bay.”
Trump bought the blufftop golf course in 2002 for the discounted price of $27 million after the 18th hole fell into the Pacific Ocean three years earlier. The property played a role in Trump’s New York fraud trial, with the state attorney general suing Trump, three of his children and his company for allegedly inflating the club’s value and conservation easement as part of a broader lawsuit.
The former president is seeking to build homes around the golf course, which is a half mile from the active slide area. His campaign said it was “monitoring” conditions in the city.
The Harris campaign called the appearance “bizarre.”
“Donald Trump took his trainwreck on the debate stage straight to California,” said campaign spokesman James Singer. “In a rambling, defensive, often incoherent event to promote his golf course, he yet again showed the country how he is melting down.”
The golf course is in Rancho Palos Verdes, a city that is under a state of emergency issued by Newsom this month because of extreme land movement triggered by back-to-back rainy winters.
Hundreds of homes nearby have had their electricity and gas cut off. Neighborhoods near the golf course are under a city-issued evacuation warning, with the fissured land moving about nine to 12 inches a week and houses cracking and sliding off their foundations.
John Cruikshank, the city’s mayor, met with Trump and spoke briefly about the need for state and federal aid to shore up the land.
Trump was in the midst of a two-day fundraising swing through Harris’ home state. On Thursday, donors paid up to $250,000 to attend an event in Beverly Hills.
The former president is scheduled to attend a Friday afternoon fundraiser in the Bay Area hosted by relatives of Newsom’s wife. Couples are being asked to pay up to $500,000 to attend the Woodside event hosted by Tom and Stacey Siebel. Tom Siebel is a billionaire software developer and businessman who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s 2024 campaign and is a second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the Democratic governor’s wife.
On Thursday, Trump called the debate “a monumental time,” telling an audience in Tucson that he won. He lambasted the moderators and falsely claimed Harris supports allowing babies to be killed after birth and wanted to confiscate people’s guns. He also hammered on immigration — one of his campaign’s top issues and a major sticking point in the border state.
“People said I was angry at the debate,” Trump said. “And yes I am angry, because he allowed 21 million illegal aliens invading our communities.”
Trump announced a new economic policy, “no tax on overtime.” The former president has already called for an end to taxes on tips and on Social Security benefits.
“That gives people more incentive to work,” Trump said about his new proposal. “The people who work overtime are among the hardest working citizens of our country and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them.”