The former president has made hitting back at opponents and accusers a centerpiece of his political identity, but his performance at his namesake Manhattan office tower was startling even by Trump’s combative standards.

At times, he seemed to relish using graphic language and characterizations of the case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, which could expose the former president to further legal challenges from Carroll’s attorneys. His remarks were especially striking given that they came four days before Trump will debate Vice President Kamala Harris, with early voting about to begin in some parts of the country and Election Day just two months away.

Trump is doing his best to stay in the public eye while Harris prepares for the debate in private, meeting with her advisers in Pittsburgh. That’s a reflection of their divergent campaign styles, with Trump frequently engaging with reporters — albeit often in friendly settings — while Harris has done just one interview and no news conferences since taking President Joe Biden’s place atop the Democratic ticket.

His team had billed Friday’s appearance as a press conference and Trump repeatedly brought up Harris’ lack of news conferences. But Trump took no questions and instead talked about the cases against him for an hour while hardly mentioning any campaign issues.

“I’m running for president, and I have all these cases all of a sudden come,” he said. “And they’re fake cases.”

Trump’s campaign raised tens of millions of dollars off his previous indictments, convictions and appearances in court. But it’s unclear how focusing on his legal woes will help him now as he works to win over undecided voters — including independents and those on the fence in critical swing states, ahead of a critical debate on Tuesday that will likely draw tens of millions of viewers.

Trump has disregarded his aides’ advice to focus on policy

Trump’s trying to seize the political offensive by bringing up allegations against him recalled 2016 when, in the weeks before Election Day, he attempted to dismiss as simple “locker room talk” a recording of him bragging about grabbing, forcibly kissing and sexually assaulting women, which triggered subsequent allegations of misconduct by a string of women.

But on Friday, standing inside Trump Tower, where he lived for decades before moving to Florida, Trump had many moments that evoked a more distant past.

He suggested women have accused him of wrongdoing because he is famous. He made a trio of references to how he was already famous in some circles in the 1970s, and talked about his work in the real estate and construction worlds in the 1980s — before millions of today’s voters were born. At one point, he referenced the New York Post’s famous “Page Six” gossip section, whose writers have spent decades covering him, as being the internet of its day.

Trump called Carroll’s case against him “Monica Lewinsky Part II,” referencing the then-White House intern who had a sexual relationship with President Bill Clinton, and recalled an infamous dress that played a pivotal role in the late-1990s impeachment proceedings against Clinton.

The former president also repeatedly implied he would not have assaulted two of his accusers due to their looks. He said of a woman who has accused him of sexual misconduct on a plane in the 1970s “she would not have been the chosen one,” and of Carroll, “I never touched her. I would have had no interest in meeting her in any way, shape or form.”

Harris, a former California attorney general, says frequently of her opponent’s criminal record, “I know Donald Trump’s type.” She had no public schedule as she continued debate preparation on Friday, but has built her campaign partly around the idea of prosecuting the case against him — and the accusations Trump brought up Friday could give her more lines of political attack.

Trump’s supporters and aides have urged him to focus on policy contrasts with Harris instead of personal attacks during the final stretch of a race that remains extremely close.

But, as Trump spoke, two of his top political advisers were on a call with Republican members of Congress, criticizing the media as being too soft on Harris while saying they felt confident about the race for the White House. Instead, the former president was flanked by his lawyers, some of whom also spoke in defense of their client.

Trump faces unprecedented criminal and civil jeopardy for a major candidate

His comments came after Trump was in court to hear his lawyers argue for overturning a jury’s $5 million verdict finding him liable of sexually abusing Carroll in 1996.

Juries now have twice now awarded Carroll huge sums for Trump’s claiming she made up a story about him attacking her in a department store dressing room to help her sell a memoir. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from continuing to make nearly identical statements to reporters. On Friday, he said again that Carroll was telling a “made up, fabricated story.”

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, warned in March after a jury awarded Carroll another $83 million that she would continue to monitor Trump’s comments and would consider suing again if he kept it up. In a speedy response to his Friday comments at Trump Tower, Kaplan said in a statement, “I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: All options are on the table.”

In the meantime, Trump faces unprecedented criminal and civil jeopardy for a major-party nominee.

He has separately been convicted on 34 felony counts in a New York state case related to hush money payments allegedly made to a porn actor. The judge in that case announced separately Friday that he would postpone sentencing until after Election Day on Nov. 5.

Trump has also been ordered to pay steep civil fines for lying about his wealth for years.

And he’s still contending with cases alleging his mishandling of classified documents, his actions after the 2020 election and his activities during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — though none are likely to go to trial prior to Election Day.

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The justices turned down a request from the Justice Department to lift a sweeping appeals court order that blocked the program, known as the SAVE plan, which has been the subject of legal challenges from more than a dozen GOP-led states in recent months. The court said in an unsigned order that it “expects that the Court of Appeals will render its decision with appropriate dispatch.” There were no noted dissents.

Its order leaves the injunction from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in place for now. The Education Department paused loan payments for borrowers enrolled in the program earlier this month because of the ongoing legal proceedings.

Mr. Biden’s attempts to provide relief to millions of Americans have not fared well before the Supreme Court, which last year struck down an earlier plan that would have benefited more than 40 million Americans and forgiven nearly half-a-trillion-dollars in loans.

Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan

The latest program is an income-driven repayment plan in which monthly payments of a loan are based on the borrower’s income. Rolled out by the Biden administration in July 2023, the SAVE plan lowers monthly undergraduate loan payments to 5% of a borrower’s’ discretionary income above 225% of the federal poverty line — up from 150% — and provides for shorter repayment periods and earlier loan forgiveness for borrowers with smaller starting balances. A borrower who owed $12,000 or less, for example, would have their outstanding debt wiped away after making 10 years of payments.

The administration said it had the authority to make these changes under the Higher Education Act and estimated that out of the 8 million borrowers who enrolled in the SAVE Plan, 4.5 million have monthly payments of $0. Some of the plan’s provisions took effect at the end of July 2023, and others were implemented in January. Others still were set to come into force on July 1.

The Education Department estimates the SAVE plan will cost nearly $156 billion over a decade. But critics have argued that the actual cost is $475 billion, since they said the Biden administration excluded from its analysis $430 billion in debt that it expected to be forgiven by the president’s earlier, broader loan forgiveness proposal. That plan, which relied on the 2003 HEROES Act, was invalidated by the Supreme Court last year.

In April, months after a rule detailing these changes was adopted, seven states filed a federal lawsuit in Missouri challenging its provisions and sought to block its implementation and enforcement. A separate group of three states also sued over the SAVE plan in federal court in Kansas and sought their own emergency relief from the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court kept the plan in place for now.

In a brief unsigned order, the court rejected the states’ request to lift that appeals court’s stay, noting that the states said they do not require relief from the Supreme Court as long as the 8th Circuit’s order is in place.

In the Missouri dispute, a federal district court found first that Missouri had the legal right to sue. It also determined that the state had a “fair chance” of succeeding on its claim that the secretary of education exceeded his authority by shortening the repayment period for borrowers with original balances of $12,000 or less.

While the court found that the states were unlikely to succeed on their remaining claims, it blocked any new loan forgiveness under the SAVE plan.

The Biden administration appealed, but stopped canceling loans for borrowers who would receive relief through the shortened repayment period. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit then issued a sweeping injunction blocking the SAVE plan and a pre-existing provision of forgiveness after 20 or 25 years of repayment.

The 8th Circuit’s decision blocks implementation of the program for borrowers nationwide and is at odds with the order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in the dispute involving the three other states, which kept the SAVE plan intact during legal proceedings.

The Biden administration has criticized the reach of the 8th Circuit’s ruling and said it effectively granted the trio of states in the other case — Alaska, South Carolina and Texas — relief they were denied by the appeals court covering their region.

“This is not how the judicial process is supposed to work,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices in a filing.

In asking the Supreme Court to lift the 8th Circuit’s injunction, Prelogar argued it “upends the status quo and is inflicting serious harms on millions of Americans.”

She noted that over the past year, millions of borrowers have received and paid student loan bills that reflected some of the initiative’s provisions.

“Because of the Eighth Circuit’s orders, however, many borrowers are now experiencing intense confusion from being told that their payments must be recalculated and from being placed in forbearance — which will delay any eventual loan forgiveness,” including under programs that were not challenged by the states, Prelogar said.

Borrowers, she continued, “would suffer additional harm if they are eventually sent higher bills and told that they can no longer count on the forgiveness that they were promised at the end of their repayment periods.”

But the seven states, led by Missouri, accused the Biden administration of making “flawed” arguments and omitting a “shocking amount of context.” Republican state officials from Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma called the Justice Department’s request to lift the 8th Circuit’s order “aggressive.”

“From this banal text about length that exists in many plans, the secretary asserts authority to forgive every penny of every student loan,” the GOP-led states wrote of the Higher Education Act in a Supreme Court filing. “Indeed, under the final rule, nearly everybody receives forgiveness.”

Pointing to the millions of borrowers whose monthly payments will be $0, the states claimed the Biden administration is effectively forgiving their loans. Because the Higher Education Act requires repayment and does not authorize forgiveness, the states argued the education secretary went too far.

Mr. Biden campaigned during the 2020 election on providing student debt relief and has rolled out a number of initiatives aimed at easing a financial burden that affects roughly 43 million Americans, who have a combined $1.7 trillion in student debt.

The Department of Education estimates that it has forgiven $168 billion in debt for more than 4.7 million Americans. It said one in 10 federal borrowers has been approved for some relief.

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