Speaking during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, alongside Hall of Fame former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who praised and endorsed him, former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wore an orange vest of the sort that garbage workers wear and explained why he was wearing it. The story had the crowd roaring with laughter.
Beginning, Trump told the crowd, “So this outfit, you know, is when he called us all ‘garbage.’ What a stupid word.” Then, commenting it to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comment about Trump supporters being a “basket of deplorables,” he said, “That blows ‘deplorable’ away, don’t you think?”
He then said that he thought “irredeemable” was an even worse insult, saying, “Of course, I thought ‘irredeemable,’ when she said “deplorable’ or ‘irredeemable,’ I thought ‘irredeemable’ was actually worse, but ‘deplorable’ seemed to catch up. But this ‘garbage’ stuff blows it away.”
Then, describing the origin of the vest, he said, “So I’m in this beautiful plane; I’m enjoying myself. I have a wonderful suit on and one of my people came in, he says, ‘Sir, you know the word garbage is the hottest thing right now out there. The hottest thing there. Sir, would you like to drive a garbage truck?’” The crowd roared with applause and laughter as he told the story.
He continued, as the laughter and applause continued as well, “Now we’re about 30 minutes from landing, we had to do this pretty quick. I said —It’s sorta cool though, isn’t it, because you know — and I said, ‘Y’know, I think that’s okay, but y’know, I don’t feel comfortable wearing a suit’ (laughter) and they pulled up this garbage truck; I don’t know how the hell they did it so fast.”
Then, getting to the vest and why he was wearing it instead of a suit, he said, “I have very capable people. They put a big sign on the truck, did you see it? I think they showed it. (applause/laughter) and then they said, ‘Sir, we have a vest.’ I said, ‘Wow, should I leave my suit on and put it over the vest?’ But that doesn’t look very good, right? That doesn’t look good.”
He added, “So I said, ‘All right, look, let me take it off.’ And I actually said, ‘How the hell do you get into this truck? It’s way up high; it’s a big one.’ (laughter). This was a beauty. I said, ‘You didn’t have to buy it that big, right? You have to get it that big?’ They brought this brand-new gorgeous truck, wonderful driver – he looked like Cary Grant in his prime, you know who that is? . This beautiful driver and he drove that big thing up. And I said, ‘Man, this is bad, ’cause now I have all the cameras, they’re all watching.’”
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Then, taking the media to task, he said, pointing to the back of the crowd, where the media sat, as the crowd booed, “Look look at all the fake news (booing), they were most of them. Now most of them, many of them were there and I’m saying, ‘Oh, boy, you know one little mistake with these guys and your political career is over.’ So I said, ‘Man, if I don’t get up there this is going to be embarrassing.’ These stupid people, they’ll say, ‘He’s cognitively and physically impaired!’ and I can’t do that when I’m alongside this great athlete. I got to get up to that.”
Building on that as he described having to hoist himself into the “So, look, so the first stair’s like up here . I’m saying, s***!. So I had the adrenaline going and I made it. I made it. And then I gave a little news conference from the front of the — y’know, they ask their wiseguy questions and everything, and then we drove about two feet. I got out, got in the car, and then I got in the car and I’m driving over here and I have this still on, and I come into the arena and I say, ‘Where’s my jacket? I want to get outta this thing.’ And they said, it would be unbelievable if you could wear it on stage. And I said, ‘No way, I got 25,000 people standing outside, I got all these people here. There’s no way I’m wearing it on stage.’ They said, ‘Oh, okay, sir.’ I said, ‘Get me my jacket.’”
Trump next said that he was told, “But if you did [wear the vest on stage], you know, it actually makes you look thinner. And they got me, I said, ‘I want to wear it on stage.’ When they said I look thinner, I said, ‘In that case, I’ll wear it on stage.’ I may never wear a blue jacket again. I may go in this. They said that, that was the word, that was the key. ‘Sir, you look thinner.’” As could be predicted, much laughter resulted from that as well.
Trump then concluded, saying, “So, anyway, so we had a little fun about a very serious subject. We had a little fun about a time where our country is not having a lot of fun because we’re not doing well as a country — but we’re going to be doing well very shortly, I promise you.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video