Donald Trump stepped up to the microphone at the Republican Party’s biggest fundraising dinner on Wednesday night. What followed was one hour of screaming, boasting, name mix-ups, and straight-up contradiction.
Trump kicked things off by declaring the GOP was winning. “We have a hot party. We have a very hot party,” he told the room.
But just one day earlier, Democrats had flipped a Florida state house seat in the same district as Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. That was nearly their 30th pickup since Trump returned to office. Republicans have flipped zero. His approval ratings are at historic lows and millions of Americans are still struggling with everyday costs.
Still, Trump pressed on. And things got loud fast.
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He brought up the 2020 election, as he almost always does. He called it “equally good” before suddenly screaming at the crowd: “Millions of us. Dirty cheaters. Dirty, rotten cheaters!” Every single court that looked at his fraud claims threw them out. His own attorney general rejected them too. Those same claims pushed a mob to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, injuring 174 police officers and killing five people within 36 hours.
But the biggest contradiction of the night was still to come.
For weeks, Trump has been on a crusade against mail-in voting. He has demanded Congress pass his SAVE Act, calling mail-in ballots a tool for fraud. Then, standing in front of the very people he needs to pass that law, he said: “I hate mail-in ballots. I’ve won with mail-in ballots, but I hate mail-in ballots.” The room did not seem to notice the irony. Critics certainly did. The SAVE Act would require voters to show a passport or birth certificate just to cast a ballot, something Senator Chuck Schumer called “a naked attempt to rig our elections.”
Then things got awkward fast.
Trump tried to boast about the capture of Venezuelan former president Nicolás Maduro, a raid carried out without congressional approval that he has used as a centerpiece of his immigration messaging. But he could not remember Maduro’s name. “We apprehended the outlaw Viktor... you know this, from Venezuela… named Nicolas Máduro,” he said, appearing to mix him up with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
He then shifted to talking about his wife.
Trump wrapped up with a tribute to Melania’s documentary, licensed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for around $40 million. He called her “a fantastic movie star” and told the crowd: “There’s no talking to her. Darling, congratulations on being number one. ‘Oh, thank you darling.’ There’s no talking to her.” What Melania’s streaming numbers have to do with winning House seats was never explained.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
