Donald Trump’s bizarre closing message Friday to supporters in Michigan: Don’t pay your bills if you’re not satisfied with the job done.
“I pay more than I’m supposed to when they can do a good job, but when they don’t do a good job, don’t pay your damn bill,” Trump said during a a meandering rally in which he also spoke of his “beautiful white skin” and wrongly claimed the U.S. is in a “recession.”
The off-the-cuff comment about stiffing workers was declared to a packed arena just four days before Americans are set to decide who will become their next president: Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. And he hinted that he’d be stiffing his own campaign contractors as he struggled with his podium microphone—something he indicated has been a regular issue on the campaign trail.
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The Republican nominee was speaking about manufacturing jobs when, all of a sudden, his microphone got louder. The 78-year-old Trump appeared ecstatic with the adjustment, but the person who made the fix may not be so happy should Trump’s accountants follow through with their boss’ demand.
“That’s better with the mic, that’s better. Backstage, these mic guys, I’m telling you,” Trump said, clearly irritated.
“I’m having a lot of problems with mics lately. I’m not happy,” Trump said before raising his voice. “Get yourself a new contractor, please, and don’t pay the bill for this contractor.”
Trump then went on to mock one of his favorite targets: the media. He predicted the press will write articles about him stiffing the mic guys, as they’ve done previously in reporting on the people Trump has refused to pay—such as the municipalities who said last month they were being stiffed out of a combined $750,000 from Trump rallies.
Trump eventually got back on topic after issuing one final grumpy complaint: “I gotta do these speeches like three, four times a day for 62 days, almost. And then on top of it, I have a mic that doesn’t work half the time.”
With the microphone annoyance out of the way, Trump went on to claim that the U.S. economy is headed for a recession if he isn’t voted back into the White House. That claim contradicts what Trump said himself earlier this week at an event in Texas, where he said he is to thank for the booming U.S. economy because Wall Street experts think he’s going to win next week.
Trump also claimed—wrongly—on Friday that Harris, 60, had referred to Trump supporters as being “garbage, total garbage.” He repeated his usual insults, calling her a “very dumb woman” and a “low IQ individual.”
Perhaps the the clearest proof that Trump arrived in Michigan with no hard talking points to stick to came when he rambled about his “beautiful white skin,” suggesting he could be much tanner had he not dedicated nearly the last decade to politics.
“Somebody said to me, are you glad you did it? I said, absolutely. But I could have been on the best beaches in the world,” Trump said. “I could have had such—I could have been at the great Turnberry [hotel] in Scotland. I could have been anywhere I wanted to be. I could have had those waves smacking me in the face. I could have that white, beautiful white skin that I have, would be nice and tan. I got the whitest skin because I never have time to go out on this sun but I have that beautiful white and, you know what, it could have been beautiful tan, beautiful.”
Hours later in Milwaukee, another faulty microphone frustrated Trump even more.
“Do you want to see me knock the hell out of people backstage?” he asked the crowd while using a corded microphone as a backup. “It‘s a pretty stupid situation, but that‘s OK. I get so angry. I‘m up here seething. I’m seething! I’m working my ass off with this stupid mic.”
Audio failures at Trump’s rallies have been occurring more frequently of late. At a Michigan campaign stop a couple weeks ago, his microphone cut out, leaving him pacing the stage for nearly 20 minutes.
Then, as he did Friday, Trump said he would refuse to pay for the equipment set-up.
“If it goes out again, I‘ll sue the ass off that company,” said the litigious former president, who recently filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS News because of its interview of Vice President Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes—a move that legal experts call “frivolous and dangerous.”
Trump, of course, backed out of his interview on the program.
