We’ve all heard Donald Trump say some off-color things–after all he kicked off his campaign that way– but lately it seems like he’s getting more and more fed up with the way things are going, and refuses to apologize for it. In a 95-minute speech to a large crowd in Davenport, Iowa, Trump went on his most recent, and quite possibly his most exasperated rant yet.
Trump, who showed up to the event 40 minutes late, sounded like he lost his voice and at times ran out of breath while ranting about the state of the Republican primary and the United States in general. He began his speech on Thursday with the topic of illegal immigration, a subject that has become central to his campaign, but he didn’t stop there.
Over the course of his speech he touched on several classic Trump themes and sayings. “We don’t win anymore,” he lamented and “I’ll be the best jobs president that God ever created.” He also called several politicians “stupid,” for negotiating bad deals, most notably President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
While most of these antics seem like the standard practice for the colorful real estate mogul, he continued for over an hour and a half on arguably his most intense rant of the campaign. Much of his discussion focused on the military, specifically the United States’ involvement in the Middle East. At one point he claimed that he would have stopped the 9/11 attacks:
I wrote a book, ‘The America We Deserve’–in 2000–where I said there’s a guy named Osama Bin Laden, in my book! And we better watch him… I said, ‘there’s a guy, Osama bin Laden, and we better do something about him because he’s gonna go under a rock’–and this is what I said in the book–and three years later the World Trade Center came down with him.
He also talked about more contemporary military challenges, notably how he would deal with the Islamic State. After recanting his initial reluctance to divulge the details of his grand strategy (so as not to inform the enemy) he laid out a bold plan:
ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because they have certain oil camps, they have certain areas of oil that they took away, some in Syria some in Iraq, I would bomb the shit out of ’em. I would just bomb those suckers. I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there’d be nothing left.
At the beginning of Trump’s speech, the crowd fed off of his enthusiasm, cheering when Trump refused to be “politically correct.” But as he went on, the crowd’s applause became less frequent and more tepid. Those standing in the bleachers behind his podium started to sit down after about an hour and 20 minutes of talking. When he started discussing his competition in the primary race, the audience appeared to become somewhat uncomfortable. The Washington Post notes, “As Trump attacked Carson using deeply personal language, the audience grew quiet, a few shaking their heads. A man sitting in the back of the auditorium loudly gasped.”
Trump became particularly animated, and at times distraught, when he discussed his opponents. He first teed off on Hillary Clinton, claiming that she is “playing the women’s card,” and argued that her gender is the limit of her appeal. After Clinton, he moved on to his competition in the Republican primary. The most notable attack, however, was saved for Ben Carson, who has become his most significant challenger in the polls.
He started by saying, “now Carson’s an enigma to me,” and he continued to note that “he wrote a book, and in the book he said terrible things about himself. He said he’s pathological and that he’s got, basically, pathological disease.” He continued to rip into Carson exclaiming,
I don’t want a person whose got pathological disease… I’m not saying it! He said he’s got pathological disease… If you’re pathological, there’s no cure for that, folks.
Next, he referenced an interview that he did on CNN earlier that day. In the interview, he essentially compared Carson to a child molester, a claim that despite there being no evidence to back up, he repeated in Davenport.
If you’re a child molester, a sick puppy, there’s no cure for that… if you’re a child molester, there’s no cure. Pathological–there’s no cure… So he’s a pathological, damaged, temper, a problem.
At one point when discussing Carson’s life story–which involved him attempting to stab one of his friends at a young age only to be stopped by his friend’s belt buckle–Trump stepped away from the mic to demonstrate with his own belt.
“How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” Trump bemoaned. He finished his analysis of Carson’s story saying, “And he goes into the bathroom for a couple of hours and he comes out and now he’s religious… And the people of Iowa believe him. Give me a break.”
Trump is generally pessimistic about the current state of the country, after all, he wants to “make America great again,” but this time it seemed like he had just about had enough. He couldn’t understand Carson’s surge in the polls, he thinks American politicians are stupid, and he just can’t quite figure out why everyone doesn’t love him.
I don’t want to be the 100th person to mark “the beginning of the end” for Donald Trump’s presidential bid, but it’s becoming clear that campaigning is wearing on him. Truthfully, it’s impossible to say what’s next for Trump, but if his campaign does end prematurely, he might actually be fine with that. “I go back to my life,” he said, “I don’t have to do interviews, which I don’t like doing to be honest with you,” and “I can leave the scum back here, the press, alone… I don’t need them anymore.”
If you want to subject yourself to the pain, here’s the full video: