Depending on how you feel about Donald Trump, today was either an embarrassment of riches or just an embarrassment.
The former president was in Derry, New Hampshire, on Monday to hold a rally and to sign up for the New Hampshire presidential primary, The Associated Press reported.
Trump took the opportunity to make so many bizarre, false statements that it’s hard to choose the wackiest.
But we’ll try.
The most newsworthy quote probably came prior to the rally, when a reporter asked Trump if his recent perplexing claim that Sidney Powell was never his attorney (although he’s previously said she was) meant that his interactions with her wouldn’t be covered by attorney-client privilege.
Trump, who has been indicted four times, responded by making the completely false statement that he was “never indicted”.
“We did nothing wrong,” Trump said. “This is all Biden’s stuff … I was never indicted. You practically never heard the word.”
Another strange quote occurred during Trump’s rally when he told his supporters to watch other voters, but not to “worry about voting” themselves.
“You don’t have to vote, don’t worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes,” he said.
Trump also remarked that “US” and “us” are spelled the same and noted that he’d “just picked that up”.
“Has anyone ever thought of that before?” he asked the crowd. “Couple of days, I’m reading, and it said ‘us’ and I said, you know, when you think about it, us equals US. Now if we say something genius, they will never say it.”
The former US president also apparently confused Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, with Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while praising Orbán as “one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world”.
Trump also promised to keep immigrants who “don’t like our religion” from entering the United States. Of course, the First Amendment establishes that there is no state religion in America.
He also justified challenging the 2020 election results by saying he doesn’t mind “being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason”.
Trump seems to be on a roll with his bluster and falsehoods.
Last week, he told reporters outside a New York City courtroom that his Mar-a-Lago estate was the “most expensive house probably in the world” — which it’s not!