Trump weighs in on NY mayor, vaccines and drones in freewheeling press conference at Mar-a-Lago

[December 17, 2024]  By COLLEEN LONG and JILL COLVIN

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — In a freewheeling press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club, President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he would consider pardoning embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams, declared the country was “not going to lose" the polio vaccine and weighed in on the flurry of drone sightings over New Jersey.

Holding court with reporters for the first time since he won the election and secured a second term, Trump also called on the Biden administration to stop selling off unused portions of southern border wall, threatening legal action.

“We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall we already have,” he railed. “It’s almost a criminal act.”

Trump's performance Monday underscored how he has already forced his return to the center of the national political conversation, weeks before he is set to return to the Oval Office. The session was notably less combative than some of the more heated exchanges he held with reporters during the campaign. Trump, looking relaxed at the lectern, joked with those he recognized and talked about how much easier the transition has been than after his first election.

“The first time everybody was fighting me,” he said. “This time everyone wants to be my friend.”

After spending most of the last few weeks mostly behind closed doors at Mar-a-Lago, Trump used the session to test-drive policy ideas, attack his enemies and issue warnings of what is to come.

That included the threat of a lawsuit against famed Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, whose final survey before the election badly underestimated Trump's support in the state, which he won.

“In my opinion it was fraud and election interference," Trump claimed of the survey. Selzer, who declined to comment, announced that she would retire her polling operation last month but said she had decided to before the election.

ABC News announced over the weekend that had it agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump's presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit he had filed over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping a writer.

Continuing his threats of legal action, Trump railed Monday against the Biden administration over the border wall material sales, saying he has spoken to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Texas officials about a potential restraining order.

Congress last year required the Biden administration to dispose of the unused border wall pieces. The measure, included in the massive National Defense Authorization Act, allows for the sale or donation of the items to states on the southern border, providing they are used to refurbish existing barriers, not install new ones. Congress also directed the Pentagon to account for storage costs for the border wall material while it has gone unused.

“I’m asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall,” Trump said.

The Department of Defense, however, said that further sales can't be blocked because all the excess border wall material has already been distributed. Most was provided to other federal agencies and state governments, as required by defense legislation signed on Dec. 22, 2023. The rest was sold to GovPlanet, which buys and auctions off government surplus.

While Trump described the handover between Biden and his incoming team as “a friendly transition,” he also took issue with efforts to allow some members of the federal workforce to continue working from home. Trump said that if government workers don’t come back into the office under him, they will be dismissed.

Trump also weighed in on Adams, who is facing federal fraud and corruption charges. Asked whether he would consider pardoning Adams, Trump said, “Yeah I would."

“I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump said, while at the same time acknowledging he doesn't "know the facts.”

Adams has been accused of accepting flight upgrades and other luxury travel perks valued at $100,000 along with illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals looking to buy his influence. He has pleaded not guilty. Multiple members of his administration have also come under investigation.

Adams, who insists he did nothing wrong, told reporters Monday that his attorney was “going to look at every avenue to ensure I get justice."

Trump was pressed repeatedly on the future of vaccines, amid concerns over his decision to choose the anti-vaccine advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates the shots.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump again declined to dismiss the long-debunked theory that vaccines cause autism and said Kennedy would be examining that already well-studied question.

But he also assured the public that one of the most successful vaccines would not be barred by his administration.

“You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine,” he said, calling himself “a big believer in it.”

“That’s not going to happen," he said.

Outgoing Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, had said Friday that Trump’s nominees seeking Senate confirmation should “steer clear” of efforts to discredit the polio vaccine, calling them not just uninformed, but “dangerous.”

Trump also weighed in on the mysterious drone sightings over parts of New Jersey and the eastern U.S. that have sparked speculation and concern over where they are coming from.

Taking a conspiratorial tone, Trump insisted, without offering evidence, that, “the government knows what is happening."

“Our military knows and our president knows and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” he said, refusing to say whether he had been briefed on the sightings.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said later Monday that there is no indication that the drones pose a public safety or national security threat, and that he would say so if that weren't the case. While he acknowledged frustrations, he stressed that there are more 1 million legal drones in the country.

"Having closely examined the data," he said, “we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones.”

Trump has spent the weeks since his victory building out his incoming administration and speaking with what he said were well over 100 word leaders.

But he again played coy on whether that list included Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I’m not going to comment on the Putin question," he said.

When it comes to escalating tensions in the Middle East, Trump said he would consider pulling U.S. troops out of Syria after the country's ousted leader, Bashar Assad, was overthrown by rebels.

“I don’t think that I want to have our soldiers killed,” Trump said of the 900 men and women who were placed there to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group.

In addition to meetings with foreign leaders, Trump also talked about a recent dinner with Apple CEO Tim Cook as well as the heads of major pharmaceutical companies, which Kennedy joined. The outreach, he said, made this transition feel markedly different from 2016, when his win shocked the Washington establishment.

Trump was joined at the appearance by SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, who announced that the Japanese company is planning to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years.

It was a win for Trump, who has used the weeks since the election to promote his policies, negotiate with foreign leaders and try to strike deals.

In a post on his Truth Social site last week, Trump had said that anyone making a $1 billion investment in the United States “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” he wrote.

Trump has repeatedly boasted that he has done more in his short transition period than his predecessor did in all four years.

“There’s a whole light over the entire world," he said Monday. “There’s a light shining over the world."

___ Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Lolita Baldor, Darlene Superville and Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

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