President-elect Donald Trump Tuesday railed against outgoing President Joe Biden and his policies, telling a press conference that although the administration has promised a smooth transition, it has not happened for several reasons.
"We are inheriting a difficult situation from the outgoing administration, and they're trying everything they can to make it more difficult," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. "Inflation is continuing to rage, and interest rates are far too high, and I've been disappointed to see the Biden administration's attempts to block the reforms of the American people and what they voted for."
For example, Trump said, Biden took actions on offshore drilling Monday that "will not stand."
"I will reverse it immediately," he said. "It will be done immediately, and we will drill, baby, drill. And we're going to be drilling in a lot of other locations, and the energy costs are going to come way down."
Biden on Monday moved to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, saying that drilling in those locations can cause "irreversible damages."
But Trump argued that such policies have caused prices to climb, including with the "ridiculous spending on the Green New Scam."
"All this money, trillions of dollars. It's like throwing it right out the window," he said.
Trump also accused the Biden administration of "playing with the courts" to this day, just a few weeks before he is to take office.
"They've been playing with the courts for four years. Probably got me more votes because I got the highest number of votes ever gotten by a Republican by far, actually by a lot," said Trump. "They have their friendly judges that like to try and make everybody happy. On the Democrat side, it's called lawfare. It's called the weaponization of justice. And it's happened at a level nobody's ever seen before."
Trump added that as a former "very successful president," he sealed the borders, had no wars, and defeated ISIS.
"Now, I'm going into a world that's burning with Russia and Ukraine, with Israel," he said. "We would have been out of Afghanistan with dignity and strength, as opposed to looking like a bunch of fools with 13 dead and many, many badly horrifically injured … because of that, I think Russia went and attacked Ukraine."
But if Biden wants the transition to be smooth, "you don't do the kind of things" he has done, said Trump.
"You don't have a judge working real hard to try and embarrass you," he said. "I did nothing, absolutely nothing wrong. If I did something wrong, I wouldn't be standing here right now because I've won all these cases."
Trump also railed against moves from the Biden administration to remove gas heaters and appliances from homes.
"This guy loves electric," he said. "He wants all gas heaters out of your homes and apartments. He wants them to be replaced by essentially electric heaters … they don't want you to have gas where you don't have the problems of the electric."
But Trump promised that after he's inaugurated on Jan. 20, "we'll turn the economy around very quickly … over the next four years, the United States is going to take off like a rocket ship. But really, it's already doing it."
He added that by working with Republican majorities, his administration will "cut taxes, slash regulations, raise wages, and boost incomes at a pace the world has not seen before, and certainly not from our country."
Trump also expanded on his promises to enact tariffs on Mexico and Canada — including a vow to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America."
"We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring," he said. "That covers a lot of territory. The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name. And it's appropriate."
"Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country," he added. "They can stop them. And we're going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada … the drugs that are coming through are at record numbers, so we're going to make up for that by putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Substantial tariffs."
But still, the United States wants to "get along with everybody" but it "takes two to tango," Trump said. "We're approaching the dawn of America's golden age. It's going to be a golden age for America."