For an hour on Thursday, former President Donald Trump stood at a podium and railed against Vice President Kamala Harris at his New York City tower, falsely blaming her for the deaths and rapes of children, some of which he described graphically.
As he rattled off a series of misleading and false claims about Harris’ immigration policies and role in the Biden administration, he baselessly claimed she “lost 325,000 children.”
“Then she lost, and this is probably the worst statistic of them all, 325,000 children. Think of that,” Trump claimed. “Three and a half years, she lost 325,000 children, and they're either dead, being sold into sex slavery or just plain missing.”
It’s a claim Trump has repeatedly made in recent weeks, but one that has no basis in reality. It appears to be based on an August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general that has been grasped by far-right media outlets and figures. The report noted 32,000 migrant children did not appear for their scheduled immigration court hearings between 2019 and 2023 and that there were 291,000 migrant children who had not yet had their hearings as of May 2024.
There is nothing in the report to suggest the children were “lost,” “dead” or “being sold into sex slavery” and roughly half of the years included in that DHS data, the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years, were during Trump’s presidency.
He described, in detail, rapes, murders and other violent crimes allegedly committed by immigrants against U.S. citizens, mostly including children, to drive home his point that Harris, who is set to visit the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Friday, is “grossly incompetent, weak and ineffective.”
“In Albany, last May, an illegal alien who was caught and released by Kamala Harris stalked and raped a 15-year-old girl driving up behind her, abducting her by force with a metal pipe and raping her again and again, over and over, and hurting her very badly,” Trump said.
Trump’s proposed policy to deal with the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border — which has dropped to the lowest level since 2020 after the Biden administration implemented new policies in June — is mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
He reiterated on Thursday he plans to use local police forces to round up immigrants, inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback — which used a slur for Mexicans for its title and, by some estimates, resulted in the deportation of more than one million people, including U.S. citizens.
“This will be much larger than that, but we will get rid of the drug dealers. We will get rid of the human traffickers. We will get rid of the murderers, the people that came out of jails and the people that came out of mental institutions,” Trump said. “They will all be gone. It will happen very quickly.”
Trump says he’s meeting with U.K.’s Starmer, Ukraine’s Zelenskyy
At the press conference on Thursday, Trump also said he was meeting U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer later in the evening and Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy on Friday morning.
The acknowledgment of a meeting with Zelenskyy came as the Ukrainian leader was in Washington for sit-downs with President Joe Biden and Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. Zelenskyy has been openly critical of Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, over their reluctance to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russian invaders.
His comments slamming Vance during a trip to a Pennsylvania ammunition factory earlier this week sparked a rebuke from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who called on Zelenskyy to fire his ambassador to the United States over what he described as “a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference.”
“As you know, President Zelenskyy has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 in Trump Tower. And it’s a shame what’s happening in Ukraine, so many deaths, so much destruction. It’s a horrible thing,” Trump said on Thursday, before railing against NATO allies for not dedicating enough of their budgets to military spending and claiming the war in Ukraine “never would have happened” if he was still president.
Campaigning in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump called Zelenskyy “the greatest salesman on Earth,” blamed him for the war and said “Ukraine is gone. It’s not Ukraine anymore.”
Shortly before his press conference, Trump posted on social media a screenshot of a message he claimed was from Zelenskyy asking to meet. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately return a request for comment on the planned meeting or the veracity of the message.
“I believe I will be able to make a deal between [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin and President Zelensky quite quickly,” Trump said on Thursday, but said “we’ll see what happens” when asked if his deal would involve Ukraine giving up territory, a nonstarter for Zelenskyy’s government.
Starmer, the newly elected U.K. leader, is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly’s annual meeting. Trump praised the leader of the left-leaning Labour Party, saying “he’s very nice,” and “I think they ran a great race. He did very well” before praising far-right British politician Nigel Farage.
Trump claims ‘I don’t know the situation’ in first comments on Mark Robinson scandal
As he left the press conference, Trump claimed “I don’t know the situation” when asked about the scandals surrounding North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor in the battleground state.
Robinson, who has a long history of outlandish and extreme remarks, reportedly boasted of being a “black NAZI” and being in favor of slavery years ago in the comments of a pornography website’s forum, according to CNN. Top staff on both his campaign and at his government office have resigned in recent days and several Republican governors have rescinded their support.
Despite making two visits to the state since the CNN story broke and previously praising Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” Trump’s comment on Thursday was his first time acknowledging the scandals. Vance has previously declined to denounce Robinson and said he would leave it up to the voters of North Carolina.
The Harris campaign is increasingly trying to tie Trump to Robinson as they try to win North Carolina, where polls show Trump and Harris virtually tied with Robinson down by double-digits to his Democratic opponent.
“It’s impossible to believe that, somehow, Donald Trump missed the news about his handpicked candidate for governor calling himself a ‘Nazi.’ Trump has been to North Carolina twice since the news broke and is still standing by Robinson, even as the people who know Robinson best are abandoning him,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement after the press conference. “It’s simple – Trump is committed to Robinson because he sees a loyal MAGA soldier intent on working alongside Trump to fan the flames of division and implement their toxic, extreme agenda.”
Robinson has denied the account uncovered by CNN was his, despite well-documented connections linking him to the account, and threatened legal action.
Trump wishes NYC Mayor Adams 'luck' after indictment
Trump also baselessly claimed New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted after criticizing the Biden administration for its handling of the city’s migrant crisis.
"I will say this: I watched about a year ago when he talked about how the illegal migrants are hurting our city and the federal government should pay us and we shouldn't have to take ‘em and I said, 'You know what? He'll be indicted within a year,' and I was exactly right," Trump said.
“So I wish him luck,” he said, but added that he didn’t “know anything about what he did.”
Spectrum News' Deanna Garcia contributed to this report.