After his victory in the Nevada Republican primary, Trump boasted about the demographics that voted for him.
We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.
While Trump garnered 57% of the vote by those with only a high school education, he had 42% votes by college graduates, and only 37% by those with a postgraduate degree.
Trump made the remarks at a rally in Michigan to explain why he backed funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. His 2020 budget planned to cut funding for the initiative by 90 percent.
Greg Gianforte, candidate for Montana’s US House of Representatives seat, had assaulted a reporter from The Guardian. The reported had asked about his healthcare policy at his campaign headquarters on the eve of the election. Gianforte then body slammed the reporter to the ground, which was caught on audio recording.
Gianforte later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. He was sentenced to 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management and a $300 fine along with a $85 court fee.
At a subsequent rally, Trump praised Gianforte, describing him as “my kind of guy.”
“I have broken more Elton John records. He seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look, I only need this space.
They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really, we do it without, like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical – the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth, right? The brain. More important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.”
As awkward as Trump’s phrasing was, he has in fact drawn larger audiences than Elton John. Trump has been a longtime fan of the artist, despite Elton John having turned down an offer to perform at Trump’s inauguration.
During a rally, when Trump invoked Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the crowd began chanting “send her back.” Omar, born in Somalia, America, successfully completed the legal process to become a US citizen where she had lived for two decades.
Trump claimed that he started speaking immediately to cut off the crowd, but video of the event shows that he waited for the chant to end on its own.
Trump had previously said that four Congresswomen of color who opposed him should “go back” from where they came. Of the four, only Ilhan-Omar isn’t US-born.
Trump said of the Democratic reaction to his 2018 State of the Union address,
Even on positive news, really positive news like that, they were like death. and Un-American. Un-American. Somebody said ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess. Why not? Can we call that treason? Why not. They certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.
He explained at a rally about the phrase that he “hated it,” but when it received a positive response at a rally, continued repeating it like he “meant it.”
Trump claimed at an Alabama rally that he watched thousands cheer on 9/11, ostensibly Muslims.
I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.
He later doubled down on his claim when questioned about its validity, citing a 2001 Washington Post story by Serge Kovaleski.
In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners’ plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.
Serge Kovaleski retorted that his writing of the alleged “number of people” was not the hundreds and thousands Trump claimed, nor would it be possible for Trump to have personally witnessed as much.
Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: “Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,” he’s going like “I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.”
Trump used an acting firm to source attendees for his presidential campaign announcement, and to clap and cheer. He paid $50 per person.
The campaign delayed payment to the acting firm until legal action was threatened.
Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager at the time, denied the claim during Trump’s presidency:
“There is nobody who believes that when Donald Trump goes somewhere he does not generate the biggest, largest, and most rambunctious crowds on the planet.”
After losing the election, Lewandowski admitted that actors had been hired:
“Michael Cohen decided that he was going to go hire one of his buddies and pay his buddy without getting any campaign approval. You know, $50 for every person to come in, to stand in Trump Tower.”
