Former U.S. president Donald Trump agreed to say a few nice words at a Mar-a-Lago wedding over the weekend, then proceeded to praise himself and complain about the election he lost, according to video obtained by TMZ.
Video recorded by a guest shows the Florida resort owner and ex-president rattling off a list of grievances during a donor’s wedding reception on Saturday night. Trump can be seen attacking the Biden administration on Iran, China and the southern border before he says something about newlyweds John and Megan Arrigo. It’s unclear if he said more about them before the witness started recording.
“Do you miss me yet?” Trump said during his speech, before exaggerating his vote total in the 2020 election.
“We did get 75 million votes, nobody’s ever gotten that,” said Trump, who fell short of that mark with 74.2 million votes. Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden, won the popular vote with over 81.2 million. Trump did get the most votes ever for a loser in a presidential election.
Trump then complained about election night and hinted at his baseless claims of voter fraud, though he did not linger on the conspiracy theory.
“They said, ‘Get 66 million votes, sir, and the election’s over,’” Trump said. “We got 75 million and they said… but you know, you saw what happened, 10:30 in the evening, all of a sudden I said, ‘That’s a strange thing, why are they closing up certain places, right?’”
Trump then quickly pivoted to acknowledge the couple.
“I just wanted to say, it’s an honour to be here, it’s an honour to have you at Mar-a-Lago, you are a great and beautiful couple,” he said.
The video also shows Trump offering a meandering critique of the Biden administration.
“You know, I just got, I turned off the news, I get all these flash reports, and they’re telling me about the border, they’re telling me about China, they’re telling me about Iran — how’re we doing with Iran, howdya like that?” Trump says at the start of the video.
“Boy, they were ready to make a deal, they would have done anything, they would have done anything, and this guy goes and drops the sanctions and then he says, ‘We’d love to negotiate now,’ (and Iran says), ‘We’re not dealing with the United States at all.’ Oh, well, they don’t want to deal with us.”
Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and imposed sanctions on the country in May of 2018. He failed to strike a new deal in the second half of his term.
In his Saturday wedding speech he went on to complain about China, referring vaguely to something “terrible.” He then pivoted to discussing the southern border and lamented the “squalor” that children face there.
“The border is not good, the border is the worst anybody’s ever seen it, and what you see now, multiply it times 10,” he said, before pointing emphatically at someone in the crowd. “Jim, he’s the only one I know who would handle the border tougher than me,” Trump said. He was referring to the groom’s brother, Business Insider reports.
Trump then offered a disjointed description of conditions at the border.
“What’s happening to the kids, they’re living in squalor, they are living like nobody has ever seen anybody, there’s never been anything like what’s, and you’re gonna have hundreds, and you have it now,” he said.
“It’s a humanitarian disaster from their standpoint, and it’s gonna destroy the country, and frankly, the country can’t afford it because you’re talking about massive, just incredibly massive amounts. Our school systems, our hospital systems, everything.”
The Trump administration separated thousands of migrant children from their parents under a zero-tolerance policy at the southern border. The Biden administration is not following that policy.
Biden’s administration is currently facing intense scrutiny for blocking media access to facilities where migrant children are being housed. A Washington Post analysis suggests that border crossings surge in the spring each year.
Trump has crashed weddings at his properties in the past. In 2017, for example, he made an appearance at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey to greet a pair of newlyweds.
The groom at Saturday’s wedding is a longtime Trump ally and donor, Business Insider reports. Trump also posed for a photo with the newlyweds, according to their photographer.
Comedian Blaire Erskine mocked Trump’s latest appearance in a popular Twitter video on Sunday, in which she pretended to be the bride from the reception. She joked that Trump was trying to work out all the material that he can’t tweet because he’s been banned from Twitter.
She later claimed that an alleged Canadian police officer did not realize she was making a joke, and he reached out to her asking for Trump’s autograph.
Trump currently resides at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. He has made a handful of public statements since leaving the White House and has flirted with running for office again in 2024, though his true intentions remain unknown.
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