Donald Trump came out swinging Monday morning, pushing back on claims that he froze up during a speech over the weekend and asserting that an apparent mishap involving a wobbly podium was, in fact, a stunning feat of his physical talents.
On his Truth Social platform, the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee first took issue with the way his lengthy mid-speech pause at the National Rifle Association convention Saturday had been made out to be an unintentional gaffe. He said it was actually a “standard” part of his speeches and blamed President Joe Biden’s campaign for the supposed misinterpretation of what happened.
“My Speech in Dallas this weekend at the NRA’s ‘Endorsement of President Donald J. Trump,’ was attended by a Record Crowd of very enthusiastic Patriots,” he wrote. “The Biden Campaign, however, put out a Fake Story that I ‘froze’ for 30 seconds, going into the ‘Musical Interlude’ section, when in actuality, the 30 to 60 second period of silence is standard in every one of my Speeches where we use the Music.”
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Footage of Trump’s performance—in which he stopped speaking for around 35 seconds while music played—was shared on X by the Biden-Harris campaign. The post accused the former president of playing “QAnon music during his bizarre slur-filled NRA speech,” but did not mention him freezing. Others did, however, including one from an account named “Biden’s Wins” which said Trump “just glitched out and froze at his rally tonight” and accused him of being “unfit for office” and “senile.”
“The reason they came up with this Disinformation is that Biden freezes all the time, can’t put two sentences together, and can rarely find his way off the stage without help,” Trump claimed in his rebuttal. “Donald Trump doesn’t freeze! It is a MADE UP Biden Campaign story, put out in a dying Newspaper that I never heard of, and every Reporter knows it, including the large group that was there.”
Not finished, he also set about putting his own particular spin on an incident that took place a day earlier during a rally in Minnesota. The Biden-Harris campaign shared a clip of Trump appearing to stumble as he leaned on an unsteady podium, pausing his prepared remarks to complain. “The frickin’ place is falling down!” Trump says in the footage to roars of laughter. “I notice, it keeps tilting further left—like too many other things. What a crappy contractor this was.”
In a caption on the clip, the Democrats’ campaign wrote: “A feeble Trump nearly falls down on stage after he leans on his podium too hard and then goes on an angry rant calling his event workers ‘crappy.’” This too, Trump claims, was inaccurate.
“As far as the podium, I actually stopped it from falling due to good reflexes and strength, two elements which Joe Biden does not possess,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Check out the clip! Crooked Joe is a completely incompetent and corrupt person, even when it comes to putting out a fake story like this.”
