The 3 Wildest Things Trump Said at Train-Wreck Florida Rally

Riding high as Democrats continue to scramble following Biden’s debate performance last month, Trump on Tuesday spewed a dizzying array of nonsense and repeatedly fumbled over his prepared remarks during a campaign rally at his golf course in Doral, Florida.

1. Trump claimed Biden doesn’t know what a synagogue is during a bizarre tangent on his golf skills.

“This evening, I’m also officially challenging Crooked Joe to an 18-hole golf match right here on Doral’s Blue Monster,” Trump said, after challenging Biden to a debate with “no moderators, no holds barred.”

“I’ll even give Joe Biden 10 strokes aside. And if he wins, I will give the charity of his choice $1 million,” Trump continued before immediately declaring Biden won’t take him up on the offer—not because he’s hosting the NATO summit this week but because he’s “all talk.”

Trump then claimed Biden “doesn’t know what a synagogue is” and claimed Biden got “three or four” face lifts. “You know what took him so long to get into the race?” Trump asked the crowd. “The face lift didn’t work.”

2. Trump praised Hannibal Lecter—again.

Trump spent much of his speech fearmongering about asylum-seekers, comparing them to Hannibal Lecter. He then floated a conspiracy that countries across South America, Asia, Africa, and “every other place” are intentionally emptying “their prisons, their jails, and their mental institutions” to send “bloodthirsty terrorists, savage gang members, and child predators into the United States to prey on our people, to prey on you, to prey on everybody.”

“Did anyone ever see The Silence of the Lambs? Did you ever hear of Hannibal Lecter?” Trump asked the crowd while railing against asylum-seekers. “He was a lovely man. He would love to have you for dinner. He will take you. He had many people for dinner.”

Trump appeared cognizant of how far-fetched this comparison was, noting that the media “will say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible what Trump would say. He is rambling about Hannibal Lecter.’ No I’m not, rambling,” he said in defense of his recurring non sequitur likening asylum-seekers to a fictional character who eats people. “We are allowing people from insane asylums and mental institutions into our country by the tens of thousands.”

Trump’s claim appears to be rooted in a conspiracy theory that crime has dropped in Venezuela due to intentional efforts to send criminals to the U.S. According to available data, crime rates in Venezuela have gradually reduced slightly over time due to reduced opportunities for crimes to occur, as more people have been plunged into poverty and there is nothing of value worth stealing from them.

3. Trump promised to “take over our capital.”

Trump said he would take over Washington, D.C., so that it is “no longer a nightmare of murder and crime.” He also claimed people get “shot, mugged, raped” every time they visit the Jefferson Memorial or Washington Monument.

Does Joe Biden have Representative Nancy Pelosi’s support to lead the Democratic ticket in November? Pelosi says that it’s up to him.

Pelosi was asked the question on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, and she ominously replied, “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run.

“We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said. Host Jonathan Lemire then reminded her that Biden has said he is going to run, and asked her if she wanted him to run.

“I want him to decide whatever he decides to do, and that’s the way it is, whatever he decides, we go in,” Pelosi responded.

Pelosi’s response could be easily interpreted as a nonanswer. Immediately after Biden’s disastrous debate performance two weeks ago, she didn’t make a commitment either. Last week, she called for both Donald Trump and Biden to take a mental fitness test.

Even though she doesn’t lead the House Democratic caucus anymore, Pelosi’s opinion still carries a lot of weight as a senior Democrat, and she presumably is in conversation with other leading members of the party. On Tuesday, House Democrats held a private closed-door meeting that reportedly left the party still divided on the future of Biden’s candidacy. While Biden has tried to put any thoughts of replacing him to bed, reports show that many Democrats are worried about his chances of winning reelection. If Biden doesn’t have total support from his party heading into November, it doesn’t bode well.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopolous was caught on film expressing doubt that President Joe Biden will be able to handle another term in the White House, only a few days after he did an exclusive interview with the embattled commander in chief.

In a low-quality video published by TMZ Tuesday, a pedestrian approached Stephanopoulos on the street in New York City. “Do you think Biden should step down? You’ve talked to him more than anybody else has lately,” the man asked.

“I don’t think he can serve four more years,” Stephanopolous replied, in a candid moment.

It’s a troubling response from the journalist whose interview with the president last week was meant to assuage national anxieties about Biden’s mental acuity, following a disastrous performance in last month’s presidential debate on CNN.

Stephanopolous’s comment also comes amid a high-stakes week for the president, as Biden continues to face calls from within his own party to withdraw from the presidential race, while also attending the NATO summit in Washington, D.C.

Stephanopoulos confirmed to TMZ that he had in fact made that statement but sought to walk it back some. “Earlier today, I responded to a question from a passerby. I shouldn’t have,” he told the outlet.

An ABC spokesperson clarified to TMZ that “George expressed his own point of view and not the position of ABC News.”

Donald Trump gave a particularly incoherent speech during a recent rally, as he rattled through a lengthy list of odd grievances that didn’t quite ring true, devoid of some very necessary segues.

In front of a crowd of about 700 people (although Trump claimed it was 45,000) in Doral, Florida, on Tuesday, the former president hit all of the normal beats of his campaign trail speeches, and then some.

Trump attacked President Joe Biden for his weak performance in the presidential debate last month, and for many of his policies. He dropped Kamala Harris’s name more than a few times, arguing that it doesn’t matter who the Democrats’ candidate is, he will beat anyone in a “thundering landslide.”

Over sweeping music, Trump went for a tear-jerking moment, only to suddenly veer into complaining about something else. It’s included in full because it’s just that wild.

“We will institute the powerful death penalty for drug dealers, where each dealer is responsible for the death, during their lives, of 500 people or more,” he said.

“Mothers will never again be forced to watch their children overdosing in hosp … and we will never allow mothers to watch their child hopelessly dying in their arms screaming, ‘What can I do, what can I do? Help me God, what can I do?’ We are a nation whose once revered airports are a dirty, crowded mess,” Trump continued, pivoting suddenly.

“You sit and wait for hours and then are notified that the plane won’t leave, that they have no idea when they will. Where ticket prices have tripled. They don’t have the pilots to fly the planes, they don’t seek qualified air traffic controllers, and they just don’t know what the hell they are doing.”

From the death penalty to crying mothers and crappy airports, if Trump was hoping for an emotional moment, he seems to have missed it by a mile. His breakneck pace and awkward delivery suggests that the presumptive Republican nominee doesn’t actually care about a single one of his randomly assembled points. How can anyone take him seriously when he speeds from his often-repeated, baseless claims about immigrants to whining that as a country, “We don’t eat bacon anymore”?

Trump continued to rely on blatant fearmongering to excite his supporters, who grew sleepy and disinterested as the former president rattled on through his 75-minute speech, according to The Guardian.

“We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C., and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city, so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime. But rather it will become the most beautiful capital anywhere in the world,” Trump said.

“Right now, if you leave Florida, ‘Oh, let’s go, darling, let’s look at the Jefferson Memorial, let’s look at the Washington Monument, let’s go and look at some of the beautiful scenes,’ and you end up getting shot, mugged, raped,” he warned, promising that he’d run the city “tough and smart.”

The violent crime rate in D.C. has dropped 30 percent since 2023, according to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. But of course, Trump is unconcerned with actual crime statistics. Instead, he’s interested in keeping his base in red states ignorant, fearful, and angry about life in blue states.

Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t want Senator Marco Rubio to be his father’s running mate, fearing that it would tempt establishment Republicans into impeaching the elder Trump.

The younger Trump expressed his fear on his video podcast Triggered Monday evening, in response to a submitted question during a live Q&A, where the questioner claimed that “Rubio guarantees another impeachment,” to which the host agreed.

If Rubio was the vice president on the ticket, “by the time my father’s hand moves off in the swearing in process … 12 p.m. January 20, the second it goes off, impeachment!” Trump Jr. said. “That’s how fast it would be.”

“There is something about having someone from outside the establishment to sort of further protect you from that establishment,” Trump Jr. added.

While speculation abounds, there still is no indication as to who Trump will pick as his vice president. Some reports say the shortlist has three people: Rubio, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Other names have been mentioned in the past few months, including Senator Tim Scott, Representative Elise Stefanik, and Representative Byron Donalds.

In Rubio’s case, though, his presence on the ticket would seem odd considering how much Trump mocked the Florida senator on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, calling him “little Marco.” Rubio eventually fell in line like the rest of the GOP and backed Trump, but his political career never quite got over Trump’s bullying and his unsuccessful attempts to shoot back.

Lately, Rubio has been defending the former president and convicted felon from attacks related to the Heritage Foundation’s extreme playbook Project 2025, downplaying the manifesto and Trump’s connection to it. Will Trump overlook Rubio’s establishment ties to get a staunch defender like him as his vice president? According to one Trump adviser, the decision should be known to everyone by next Monday.