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

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 recent York Mayor Eric Adams, declared the country was “not going to misplace” the polio vaccine and weighed in on the flurry of drone sightings over recent Jersey.

Holding court with reporters for the first period 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 act Monday underscored how he has already forced his profitability to the center of the national political exchange, weeks before he is set to profitability 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 shift has been than after his first election.

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

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 arrive.

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

“In my view 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 information 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 assess, 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 recent 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 overage.

While Trump described the handover between Biden and his incoming throng as “a amiable shift,” 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 arrive 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 ponder that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump said, while at the same period acknowledging he doesn’t “recognize the facts.”

Adams has been accused of accepting flight upgrades and other luxury trip 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 arrive under investigation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump also weighed in on the mysterious drone sightings over parts of recent Jersey and the eastern U.S. that have sparked hazard-taking 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 rationale they desire to keep people in suspense,” he said, refusing to declare whether he had been briefed on the sightings.

Trump has spent the weeks since his win 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 chief, Bashar Assad, was overthrown by rebels.

“I don’t ponder that I desire 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 throng.

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 shift feel markedly different from 2016, when his triumph shocked the Washington establishment.

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

It was a triumph for Trump, who has used the weeks since the election to promote his policies, discuss 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 capital distribution 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 shift period than his predecessor did in all four years.

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

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