Donald Trump inadvertently says ‘we need to keep our country gay’
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a Save America Rally at the Aero Center Wilmingto. (Allison Joyce/Getty)
Donald Trump became an accidental queer ally for a few embarrassing seconds after he mistakenly said “we need to keep our country gay.”
The former president malfunctioned at a North Carolina campaign rally on Friday (23 September) where he spoke to a bored-looking crowd in a hodge-podge of buzzwords that he seemed to be reading from an autocue.
“Remember I was going to say, I was going to use an expression, ‘We have to keep our country gay, but, uh, but it’s not, I mean for some reason, it’s not great anymore,” a befuddled Trump said.
Trump just malfunctioned again. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/4sFvCGdxnT
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 24, 2022
Twitter, of course, jumped at the chance to congratulate the new queer ally in a wave of hilarious tweets, with one user saying: “Donald Trump, welcome to the LGBTQ+ community.”
“Finally, I agree with Trump on something!” another user said, with those agreeing, saying “Keep our country gay? Werk!”
Others joked that the Republican was showing signs that he was a robot, with one saying: “Here’s their guy with a programming glitch.”
As well as mistakenly sending his overwhelming support for the queers, Trump was also at the rally in Wilmington to support senate candidate Ted Budd, who is currently serving as the US representative for North Carolina’s 13th district.
But Trump used a large portion of his time at the rally to complain about the lawsuit filed against him and his family business by New York attorney general Letitia James for allegedly overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars.
“There’s no better example of the chilling obsession with targeting political opponents than the baseless, abusive, and depraved lawsuit against me, my family, my company, by… the attorney general of New York state,” Trump said, managing to say all the words correctly.
His words against James then became increasingly personal and insulting, saying that she was a “raging maniac” and that he thought, “boy, that woman is angry.”
Trump also didn’t skip out on his usual talking points, including the lie that he won the 2020 election despite having factually lost. He then reiterated his call for ending early voting and claiming that votes should only take place in person on election day in an effort to fix what he perceives as a broken electoral system.
“We’re going to continue to work on that,” he said. “What’s the best thing you can do? How about this? A real complex idea – require the people to vote on election day, in person, with a photo ID. That makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Leaders have made similar blunders in the past
In a similarly dire mixup of words, former prime minister Boris Johnson mistakenly thanked Vladimir Putin instead of Volodymyr Zelensky during his second Commons address as a backbench MP.
The Conservative minister for Uxbridge and South Ruislip made the slip-up while noting Ukraine’s successful counter-offensive against Russia and urging the government to “double down in our defence of the Ukrainians.”
He then intended to thank Ukrainian president Zelensky for his “inspirational leadership”, but instead said Vladimir Putin’s name.
“Thanks to the heroism of the Ukrainian armed forces, thanks in part to the weapons that we are proud to be offering,” he said. “Thanks, also, of course, to the inspirational leadership of Vladimir Putin… Volodymyr Zelensky. Forgive me.”
