Former President Trump said President Biden had ‘the right to run’ for re-election and the Democratic Party ‘took it away’ from him, while blasting his new opponent Kamala Harris as the ‘least admired, least respected, and worst vice president in the history of our country.’ 

Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday afternoon after holding off-the-record meetings with major media outlets. The Trump campaign said the Republican presidential nominee wanted to address the media ‘while they were already in Palm Beach because he’s the most transparent candidate in history.’ 

Trump said Thursday that the U.S. is in ‘the most dangerous period of time I’ve ever seen for our country.’ 

‘We have somebody that hasn’t received one vote for president, and she’s running, and that’s fine with me, but we were given Joe Biden, and now we’re given somebody else,’ Trump said. ‘I think, frankly, I’d rather be running against somebody else, but that was their choice.’ 

Trump said Harris is ‘a radical left person at a level that nobody’s seen,’ and said her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is a ‘radical left man that has positions that are not even possible to believe they exist.’ 

‘He’s heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety. He doesn’t want to have borders, he doesn’t want to have walls. He doesn’t want to have any form of safety for our country,’ Trump said. ‘He doesn’t mind people coming in from prisons and neither does she — I guess because she couldn’t care less.’ 

Harris formally became the nominee after Biden suspended his re-election campaign and endorsed her amid pressure from within the Democratic Party. The Democratic National Committee formally nominated Harris as their nominee this week. 

‘The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I’m no Biden fan,’ Trump said. ‘From a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away, and people are saying he lost after the debate and he couldn’t win.’ 

‘Whether he could win or he couldn’t, when he had the right to run, and they took it away, and they said they would use the 25th Amendment,’ Trump continued. 

Trump said the pressure from within the Democrat Party and ‘what they’ve done’ is ‘pretty incredible.’ 

‘Now I’m running against somebody else, and we’re leading. We’re leading — so I’m not complaining,’ he said. ‘I’m saying, for a country with a Constitution that we cherish — we cherish this Constitution — to have done it this way is pretty severe, pretty horrible.’ 

Trump said he thought Democrats ‘would have gone out to a vote’ or ‘would have had a primary system.’ 

‘But just to take it away from him like he was a child?’ Trump said, adding that Biden is ‘a very angry man right now.’ 

‘I can tell you that he’s not happy with Obama, and he’s not happy with Nancy Pelosi,’ Trump said. ‘He’s not happy with any of the people that told him ‘you’ve got to leave.’ He’s very unhappy, very angry.’ 

Trump said he thinks Biden ‘also blames’ Harris. 

‘He’s trying to put up a good face, but it is a very bad thing in terms of a country when you do that,’ Trump said. ‘I’m not a fan of his, as you probably have noticed, and he had a rough debate, but that doesn’t mean that you just take it away like that.’ 

He added: ‘You go out to a vote, you do something — he had 14 million votes. She had no votes.’ 

‘And she’s crashing,’ Trump said. 

‘We have a vice president who is the least admired, least respected, and the worst vice president in the history of our country. The most unpopular vice president,’ he said of Harris. 

Trump also slammed Harris for not engaging with the media. Harris has been the de facto Democratic nominee for 18 days, and she has not held a formal press conference or sat for a wide-ranging interview. 

‘She’s not doing any news conference. You know why she’s not doing it? Because she can’t do a news conference. She doesn’t know how to do a news conference,’ Trump said. ‘She’s not smart enough to do a news conference.’ 

Trump said he is ‘very happy to run against’ Harris, and said he ‘hates to be defending’ Biden, but pointed to the Constitution again. 

‘We have a Constitution. It’s a very important document, and we live by it. She has no votes, and I’m very happy to run against her. I’m not complaining from that standpoint. And I hate to be defending him, but he did not want to leave. He wanted to see if he could win,’ Trump said. ‘They said, ‘You’re not going to win.’ After the debate, they said, ‘You’re not going to win. You can’t win. You’re out.” 

Trump said Democrats, after successfully pressuring Biden to drop out of the race, ‘just picked a person.’ 

Trump, pointing to Harris’ failed 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign, said she was ‘the first out.’ 

‘She was the first loser. Okay. So we call her the first loser. She was the first loser when, during the primary system, during the Democrat primary system, she was the first one to quit, and she quit. She had no votes, no support, and she was a bad debater, by the way, a very bad debater,’ Trump said. ‘And that’s not the thing I’m looking forward to. But she was a bad debater. She obviously did a bad job. She never made it to Iowa then, for some reason.’ 

Trump said he thinks Biden ‘regrets’ tapping Harris as vice president. 

‘He picked her and she turned on him, too. She was working with the people that wanted him out,’ he said. ‘But the fact that you can get no votes, lose in the primary system. In other words, you had 14 or 15 people. She was the first one out, and that you can then be picked to run for president.’ 

Trump added: ‘It seems, seems to me actually unconstitutional. Perhaps it’s not.’ 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a new interview with Time Magazine, apologized for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists happening on his watch, and warned that the country now faces a ‘full-fledged Iranian axis.’

Netanyahu had been prime minister for almost a year when Hamas terrorists launched the attack on southern Israel that left 1,200 people dead and hundreds more taken as hostages in Gaza. 

In an interview conducted on Aug. 4 at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, Time asked Netanyahu whether he would apologize for the Oct. 7 attack, noting his 17-year cumulative political career has been built on the argument that he is the best leader to ensure Israel’s safety.  

‘Apologize?’ Netanyahu asked. ‘Of course, of course. I am sorry, deeply, that something like this happened. And you always look back and you say, ‘Could we have done things that would have prevented it?’’

Ten months after what amounted to the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the Biden administration has increasingly grown frustrated with Netanyahu for failing to deliver a plan to end the war and get the more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas home. 

Israel now faces more fronts – in the north with Hezbollah in Lebanon, in the Gulf with the Houthis in Yemen – and now is bracing for an aerial assault from its main enemy, Iran. 

‘We’re facing not merely Hamas,’ Netanyahu told TIME. ‘We’re facing a full-fledged Iranian axis, and we understand that we have to organize ourselves for broader defense.’

According to a July poll by Israel’s most watched television station, 72% of Israelis believe Netanyahu should resign now or after the conflict ends. 

Critics, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war to further his own political ambition. 

‘Netanyahu is focused on his longevity in power more than the interests of the Israeli people or the State of Israel,’ Barak told Time. ‘It will take half a generation to repair the damage that Netanyahu has caused in the last year.’ 

Netanyahu argued that Israel must demolish every element of Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ in the region to ensure that Israel is never subjected to future massacres and that Hamas can no longer lay claim to Palestinian territories.

‘Being destroyed has bigger implications about Israel’s security,’ Netanyahu told Time, describing the war as existential. ‘I’d rather have bad press than a good obituary.’

Netanyahu delivered a speech to Congress in Washington, D.C., on July 25 to rally support from Israel’s closest ally, but nearly 130 Democrats and Vice President Harris declined to attend. 

‘I don’t think that the much-reported erosion of support among some quarters of the American public is related to Israel,’ Netanyahu told Time. 

‘It’s more related to America,’ he added, referencing a Harvard-Harris survey in January showing that 80% of respondents supported Israel, while 20% supported Hamas. 

‘There’s a problem that America has,’ Netanyahu said, noting a significant amount of support for a terrorist organization. ‘It’s not a problem that Israel has.’

The Biden administration and former President Trump have both expressed a desire for the war to end. Netanyahu has noted in the past that Israel did not start the war, but must be able to end it for its future security.

When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Tel Aviv earlier this year, he reportedly told Netanyahu to bring the war to a close, because Israeli forces had already ensured that another Oct. 7 couldn’t happen again. Netanyahu reportedly replied that wasn’t his objective. Instead, he said, the goal was to ‘completely destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.’

‘We’ve gone out of our way to enable humanitarian assistance since the beginning of the war,’ Netanyahu told Time, responding to allegations brought by Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi that the Israeli operations amounted to ‘collective punishment’ of civilians for Hamas’ actions. 

Time noted how Netanyahu embraced a policy over the past 10 years allowing Qatari funds to flow into Gaza after Hamas rose to power first through elections and later by force. It was meant as an incentive for Hamas to govern peacefully but instead financed miles of terror tunnels under civilian infrastructure. Also in January 2023, Netanyahu led government reforms that curbed judiciary powers, prompting large-scale protests. 

‘You are weakening us, and our enemy is going to see it, and we’re going to pay the price,’ former Minister of Defense Benny Gantz cautioned Netanyahu at the time. 

The prime minister placed blame on the protesters, many of whom said they would not serve in the Israeli military if the country’s democratic institutions were weakened. 

Netanyahu said his biggest mistake, however, was not going to war with Hamas in the past, listening to his security cabinet, which opposed such a move. For years, Israel’s strategy was to respond to Hamas’ attacks periodically by striking back and damaging them to the point of the terror group agreeing to a cease-fire that ultimately kept them in control of Gaza, with the ability to bolster their terror infrastructure that includes a complex network of underground tunnels.

Time reported that when Israel did go to war against Hamas for less than two months in 2014, Israeli officials said the security cabinet brought Netanyahu a plan to end the terror organization. The plan was predicted to lead to the deaths of approximately 10,000 Gazan civilians and 500 Israeli soldiers.

‘There was no domestic support for such an action,’ Netanyahu told Time regarding that plan. ‘There was certainly no international support for such an action – and you need both.’

Vice President Kamala Harris has moved into the betting lead for the first time since being elevated to the top of the ticket.

Harris has a 50.7% chance to be elected president, while former President Trump sits at a 47.9% chance to win the election, according to the Real Clear Politics betting average on Thursday.

Thursday marked the first time Harris has been the betting favorite to win the election, while it’s also the first time the Democratic ticket has been favored over Trump since May 1, when President Biden was still in the race. On that day, Biden held a narrow 42.3% to 42.2% advantage in the Real Clear Politics betting average.

Since that day, Trump continued to put distance between himself and Biden, peaking as a 66.2% favorite on July 15.

But Trump’s lead steadily declined in the weeks after Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Harris, who quickly went on to lock up the Democratic nomination.

Trump’s odds tumble culminated Thursday, just days after Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to join her on the ticket, a move the Harris campaign believes will help her solidify support in critical Midwestern swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Harris was either leading or tied with Trump on Thursday in all the major betting markets tracked by Real Clear Politics, with her biggest lead coming on the popular platform Predictit, a New Zealand-based prediction market that offers ‘shares’ of political outcomes.

Harris shares were selling for 57 cents on the platform as of Thursday morning, while Trump shares were selling for 46 cents, an 11-cent lead for the vice president. Shares on the platform are priced between $0.01 and $0.99, meaning the price of a share essentially represents the percentage chance of a particular outcome.

The shift in the betting favorite comes as Harris has also overtaken Trump in many national polls, becoming the leader on the Real Clear Politics polling average for the first time on Monday. That lead represents the first time the presumed Democratic ticket has had the advantage since September 11 of last year, when Biden a 44.5% to 44.3% advantage.

Neither the Trump nor Harris campaigns immediately responded to Fox News Digital requests for comment.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said in 2010 that his plan for Social Security was ‘very similar’ to one that would increase the retirement age and adjust the cap on withholdings. 

The Harris campaign is pushing back after Fox News Digital reviewed the unearthed clip from a debate Walz participated in during his 2010 re-election campaign for Congress. The debate was on Oct. 12, 2010, and was held at Minnesota State University, Mankato. 

Walz, the Democratic candidate and incumbent, faced off against Independent candidate Steve Wilson and Republican Randy Demmer. 

Wilson laid out his plan first, which discussed gradually increasing the retirement age. Walz answered after, saying his approach would be ‘very similar.’ 

Harris for President spokesperson Joseph Costello, though, told Fox News Digital that Walz ‘does not support raising the retirement age, and in fact, Walz has repeatedly voted to protect Social Security and against GOP efforts to raise the retirement age.’ 

During the 2010 debate, the three candidates were asked, ‘In regard to the federal budget deficit: what would you do about Social Security and Medicare with regard to the deficit?’ 

Wilson, the independent candidate, answered first. 

‘Social Security is one that we can fix, and we just have to all put on our thinking of what we’re going to have shared sacrifice… There are three different groups of people that are affected by Social Security: one, the group that are paying in; second, the ones that are ready to retire; and third, the ones that are receiving benefits,’ Wilson said. 

Wilson said those paying into the program currently have caps on the amounts taken out of their paychecks. 

‘If we would allow that to go a little higher, then we could bring more revenue in,’ he said. 

Wilson then said the retirement age should be raised. 

‘If we look at the second group, those who are retiring, if we adjusted that retirement age a little bit and give people enough warning – remember shared sacrifice, not just you getting affected, everybody,’ Wilson said. 

Wilson then said the individuals getting benefits from Social Security should have the Cost of Living and Adjustments (COLA) amounts adjusted.

On Wilson’s website, he further explained his position, which stated: ‘The age of retirement would gradually start to increase within three years of the deployment of the safety net. It would continue to be indexed to life expectancy over the longer term.’ 

When it was Walz’s turn, he endorsed Wilson’s plan. 

‘Social Security is absolutely critical. It is the greatest anti-poverty program the world’s ever seen,’ he said. 

‘Social Security, as Steve Wilson said, who has very good ideas on Social Security, he’s thought about it – he’s being honest about it – he’s laid out a plan that I think is very similar to the approach that I would take in working with them on that,’ Walz said. 

Walz, during that debate, advocated against any ‘partial privatization’ of Social Security. He also said his family was personally affected by Social Security after his father died when he was in high school. 

‘Social Security Survivor Benefits that were there to make sure that we had the bootstraps that we could pull ourselves up by,’ he said. ‘They were loaned to us by Social Security. It’s a smart program.’ 

A source familiar with Walz’s views at the time told Fox News Digital that ‘Walz does not support raising the retirement age now, and that is not what he suggested in this 14-year-old, misrepresented exchange.’

The source said that after winning his race in 2010, Walz went on to oppose plans to raise the retirement age. In 2012, he voted against raising the age to 68; in 2012, he voted against raising the age to 70; and in 2014, he again voted against raising the retirement age to 70.

When asked for comment, the Harris campaign stressed that Walz does not support raising the retirement age, and, while serving in Congress, voted against efforts to raise the retirement age. 

‘For nearly two decades, as a governor and congressman, Walz has been a strong defender of Social Security,’ Costello said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘Like the Biden-Harris Administration, he supports shoring up Social Security by having the super-wealthy pay their fair share.’ 

Costello added: ‘When he was a teenager, it kept his family afloat after his dad, a veteran, passed away from lung cancer.’

President Biden is scheduled to hold his first public event of the week on Thursday before flying to his beach house in Delaware. 

Biden hasn’t been seen publicly since walking back to the White House from Marine One on Monday after returning with first lady Jill Biden from their residence in Wilmington, Delaware. 

None of the events on the president’s public schedule have been open to the press so far this week. 

On Thursday, Biden – during events closed to the press – is scheduled to call Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen ‘to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the tragic Maui wildfires and those who lost their lives’ and receive his presidential daily briefing. 

Biden later Thursday afternoon is to welcome the Texas Rangers to the White House to celebrate their 2023 World Series championship season during an event open to only press-credentialed media. 

The president then is scheduled to depart the White House for Joint Base Andrews, from where he will then travel to Wilmington, Delaware. Biden’s arrival in Wilmington is listed as open to the press, but the president and Jill Biden will then greet campaign staff there during an event listed on the public schedule as closed to the press. The couple will then go back to their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Thursday evening. 

Biden sat down with CBS News for his first interview since exiting his race for re-election at the White House on Wednesday afternoon. The interview isn’t scheduled to air in full until Sunday. 

Aside from a promotional clip of the interview, the public hasn’t seen Biden since Monday as he returned to the White House. The president told CBS News that he is ‘not confident at all’ that there would be a peaceful transfer of power in January 2025 if former President Donald Trump loses the election, though Biden misspoke initially and said, ‘if Trump wins.’ 

‘He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it, all the stuff about, ‘If we lose, there’ll be a bloodbath, it’ll have to be a stolen election,’’ Biden said. ‘Look what they’re trying to do now in the local election districts where people count the votes,’ the president added, ‘or putting people in place in states that they’re going to count the votes, right?’

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the president, telling Fox News congressional correspondent Aishah Hasnie, ‘You’ll see him tomorrow. There will be more opportunities. We have five months left here. There’ll be plenty of opportunities, obviously, to see the president and, certainly, when we have events, public events to share and travel to share as we normally do, we will do just that.’ 

Asked if the president has yet spoken to any of the U.S. service members injured in the attack by Iranian proxies on a base in Iraq over the weekend, Jean-Pierre said at the White House press briefing that she did not ‘have any conversations to speak of,’ but added, ‘obviously, we are wishing them a speedy recovery. They were injured. And so we have to give them some space and opportunity, to get better, to get that treatment that they need. As the president, he’s also the commander-in-chief, as you know, and he takes that incredibly seriously.’ 

Of the seven injured U.S. personnel, Jean-Pierre said two have been returned to duty, two are recovering locally, and three have been evacuated for further treatment and remain in stable condition. 

As Pennsylvania comes into focus as a key 2024 battleground, there’s speculation about whether ‘Scranton Joe’ will campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris in the state, especially after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was passed up for Harris’ running mate. Harris announced earlier this week that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would join her on the Democratic ticket. 

Video showing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz claiming that he carried weapons of war into actual war has surfaced. A Minnesota National Guard response to Fox News disputes the fact that Walz actually went into battle, but rather he skirted any skirmishes and retired instead, leaving his troops behind.

Walz, who’s the chosen vice presidential candidate for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, served a quarter of a century in the National Guard. 

A video of Walz making the controversial statement can be seen on X.

‘I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,’ Walz said in his speech, aiming toward voters who don’t want guns on the streets.

Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Thomas Behrends, who said he was a member of Walz’s battalion, blasted the governor’s comments.

‘To most people, that would mean that he was actually in combat, carrying a weapon in a combat zone and getting combat pay and in a dangerous and hostile environment where he is getting shot at,’ Behrends told the ‘Ingraham Angle’ on Wednesday.

Walz never said which war he fought. During his time in the Guard, there were two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, neither of which show on his military record.

The Minnesota National Guard told Fox News that Walz was part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) while he was stationed in Italy with his unit in 2005, but that he retired before his unit went into battle.

‘Walz left the National Guard in May 2005 after 24 years of service. His unit was not given deployment orders to Iraq until July. He had put his retirement papers in 5-7 months prior to his retirement in May,’ the Minnesota National Guard said.

‘Second, there are questions about whether he served in OEF. His battalion was sent to Europe, in his case Vicenza to train units in artillery – his specialty was artillery. If you are deployed overseas in support of OEF according to the National Guard you officially served in OEF, whether you touched foot in Afghanistan or not. That is in his official military service record below.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment and received an automated response.

Walz was named this week as the running mate with Kamala Harris on the Democratic national ticket. Harris, the current vice president, will look to fill the shoes of President Biden and take on former President Donald Trump in the general election.

Trump’s running mate is J.D. Vance, who served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps. While speaking at an event Wednesday in Michigan, Vance said that Walz deserted his fellow soldiers who were heading off to war.

‘You abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq,’ Vance said.

Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin contributed to this story.