PALM BEACH, Fla. — 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 the 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 to be sworn-in for another term. He used the session, which was notably less combative than many of his exchanges with the press during the campaign, to test-drive policy ideas, attack his enemies and issue warnings of what is to come.
That even 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 that he won.
“In my opinion it was fraud and election interference,” Trump claimed of the survey. Selzer announced that she would end her polling operation last month.
Separately, ABC News announced days ago 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 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.
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 if he would consider pardoning Adams, Trump responded: “Yeah I would,” adding that he was not familiar with all of the specifics of the charges Adam is facing, while at the same time seeking to diminish them.
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 office did not immediately return an emailed request for comment on Trump’s remarks.
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.
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.
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 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, without offering evidence and refusing to say whether he had been briefed on the sightings.
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.
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.
“The first time everybody was fighting me,” he said. “This time everyone wants to be my friend.”
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 and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
