The 3 Wildest Things Trump Said at Train-Wreck Florida Rally
Donald Trump is totally losing it—and his rally at Doral made that more clear than ever before.
![Donald Trump at a mic. People in the crowd in the stands behind him hold signs up reading "You're Fired!" and "Trump 2024."](http://images.newrepublic.com/74d1226ad752a89387b3a597fab5d57e70e983d7.jpeg?auto=format&fit=crop&crop=faces&q=65&w=768&h=undefined&ar=3%3A2&ixlib=react-9.0.2&w=768)
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 in Doral: "We will take over the horribly run capital of our country in Washington DC ... right now if you leave Florida -- 'oh, let's go darling, let's look at the Jefferson Memorial' ... and you end up getting shot, mugged, raped. We're gonna take over our capital and… pic.twitter.com/NFnuQSMnoq
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 10, 2024
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.