On Wednesday, President Donald Trump held a rally in Arizona, and the event quickly got bizarre. At one point, Trump bizarrely mocked face masks, suggesting that they get noticeably messed up if the person wearing them goes out to eat a spaghetti dinner… but how would that even work? While going through the motions of eating, the mask-wearer could just… set the mask to the side. At another point in the same event, Trump contemplated physically fighting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, adding that he didn’t think that Biden would do very well if he joined the mixed martial arts league known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Why on earth is Trump contemplating Biden joining a mixed martial arts league? These are bizarre, unhinged-sounding tangents.
Discussing the masks, Trump said:
‘You see people, and boy, you know when you have spaghetti and meat sauce that mask is not looking good. You walk out — it looks like you got into a fight with Dana White… looks like you got into a fight with one of his fighters, right? You don’t have Christmas. You don’t have the Fourth of July — no, we gotta get back to normal.’
Christmas and Fourth of July have not been cancelled because of the restrictions in public gatherings that are in place in some areas due to the Coronavirus pandemic. More acutely — what on earth is Trump talking about regarding face masks? People can just… set the mask to the side. This concept isn’t complicated. At another point during the same rally, Trump claimed that in California, residents “have a special mask” and “cannot under any circumstances take it off.” Trump called these supposed semi-permanent masks “a very complex mechanism.” What on earth is he talking about? He sounds deranged.
TRUMP: "In California, you have a special mask. You cannot under any circumstances take it off. You have to eat through the mask. Right, right, Charlie? It's a very complex mechanism. And they don't realize those germs, they go through it like nothing." pic.twitter.com/SG2nF2FsrI
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2020
At a subsequent point while in Arizona, Trump brought up the prospect of physically fighting Joe Biden. In the past, Biden has jokingly said that if he was in high school with Trump, then he might have “[taken] him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him” in response to Trump’s vitriolic boasts about committing sexual assault that were captured on tape while Trump was on the set of Access Hollywood. Biden has expressed remorse over his remarks; he made similar comments in both 2016 and 2018, and after the latter incident, he regretfully said that he “shouldn’t have brought it up again.” Trump hasn’t moved on.
While in Arizona, Trump ranted:
‘I don’t think Sleepy Joe would be a good fighter, do you? I asked Dana before — one gentle little touch to the face and he’s down. He’s down and he wouldn’t get up very quickly either, would he?.. Remember he said, “I’d like to take him to the back of the barn.” Okay — Now if I ever said that to him, they’d say, he practices violence… remember he said “I would take him to the back of [the barn]” — that’s like, if you have to fight somebody, that’s your dream fight.’
Watch Trump’s unhinged comments below:
Trump muses about how Joe Biden would fare if he fought in UFC, and how it would go if the two of them fought. Things are getting weird. pic.twitter.com/p1lSx82vfh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2020
Biden continues to lead in polls on the national level and in swing states.
