Trump's 2-hour rant to Limbaugh: Hillary's too short and Black Lives Matter is racist

Donald Trump spent two hours on Friday ranting about a dizzying array of largely unrelated topics during an appearance on conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated program.

The appearance had been billed by Trump and Limbaugh as a “virtual rally,” but the event was a standard format radio interview. In February, Trump gave Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his State of the Union speech despite Limbaugh’s decades of on-air bigotry.

Trump said in the interview that the first time he ever heard of the Black Lives Matter movement, he thought it was a “terrible term” because “it’s such a racist term.”

DONALD TRUMP: The first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, I said, ‘that’s such a terrible term,’ because it’s such a racist term. It’s a term that sows division between Blacks and whites and everybody else, and it’s a very bad term for Blacks. But they were very angry, it’s a Marxist organization.

In related comments, he attacked NBA star LeBron James, who has been an outspoken advocate against police brutality. Trump complained that when James endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, it was a bad look because he is so much taller than the former secretary of state.

“When he endorsed Hillary four years ago, she came up to his knee, I said that is not the best looking president I’ve ever seen,” Trump said.

The U.S. death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic increased by over 900 to 212,000-plus before Trump appeared on the program, but he told Limbaugh the country was nonetheless “rounding the term” in fighting the virus.

Trump also falsely claimed that a “cure” for the virus had been discovered.

“We’re rounding the term on the pandemic, and I’ll have something to say about that because I’m telling you, we have a cure. More than just a therapeutic, we have a cure,” he told Limbaugh.

Trump also claimed that he has been “healed” of COVID-19, but his administration has not given the public independent medical evidence of the current state of his infection. There is currently no “cure” for COVID-19.

He again attacked the push for mail-in voting, and despite his own infection and the virus death toll, said he didn’t understand why so many Democratic voters were choosing to vote by mail or via early voting.

Attempting to explain why California voters opposed him in 2016 and are likely to do so this year, Trump falsely claimed that Californians vote “three times” and suggested he could win the state. The most recent polling in California shows him losing to Biden by an average of 31.7 points.

Discussing fires in that state, Trump said that countries in Europe like Austria are known as “forest nations” and have superior forest management there that reduces the risk of wildfires. Previously, Trump claimed that trees in California “just explode.”

He continued to attack the Mueller report, which showed him attempting to obstruct the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia. He returned several times throughout the interview to the subject of his impeachment by the House of Representatives.

“I had to beat off the phony Mueller report, I had to beat off all this stuff, I had to beat off impeachment, I had to beat off Congress, everything else,” Trump complained.

DONALD TRUMP: See, this is what I mean with the Republicans: They don’t play the tough game. They don’t play the tough game. If this were the other side, you would have had twenty-five people in jail for the rest of their lives, with what we found.

 

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Oh, if you tried something like this against any of them? Heck yes.

 

TRUMP: Oh, are you kidding me? You would have been twenty — look at me. I had to beat off the phony Mueller Report, I had to beat off all this stuff, I had to beat off impeachment, I had to beat off Congress, everything else.

They then send it to New York, which is all political. They send into, it’s the same stuff they send to New York, have to beat that off, you know, they’ve got New York all over — they don’t stop. This is a disgrace.

Trump is expected to appear on right-wing radio host Mark Levin’s show later on Friday and on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox Friday night.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.