Donald Trump went on a wild nearly five-minute rant about bullet proof glass surrounding him at his outdoor rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
He lamented about the protective measure, but said he was OK with the fact that if anyone wanted to try to assassination him again they would need to ‘shoot through the fake news.’
The former president again talked about how he likes to ‘weave’ during his rallies amid continued attacks over his tangent-filled speeches that regularly last longer than an hour.
‘Most of them are failed writers – they’re not even good writers, okay, they’re bad writers,’ Trump said of the press at his rally. ‘So they don’t understand the weave today. They’ll never be able to do it.’
At one point during a ramble on Democratic ‘cheating’ in presidential elections, Trump demanded that the winner be announced on Election Day by 11:00 p.m. at the latest.
Trump was speaking in Lititz, Pennsylvania for his first of three swing state rallies on Sunday.
With just two days until the 2024 presidential election, Trump is also holding rallies in North Carolina and Georgia, which are also battleground states this election cycle.
But the Harris campaign says he is having trouble staying on message. At the same rally, Trump also said he shouldn’t have left office in 2020, when he was defeated by Joe Biden.
‘I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,’ Trump said. ‘We did so well, we had such a great …’ he said, cutting himself off.
The outdoor rally in Pennsylvania included a near 360-degree casing of bullet proof glass around the former president’s podium after two separate assassination attempts on him – including at his July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
For a while, Trump was moving all his rallies into indoor stadiums and arenas. When he returned to outdoor events, the increase in bullet proof glass was noticeable.
At the rally on Sunday, Trump said he didn’t think there needed to be glass in certain areas because it made him look bad on television.
‘To get me somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much – I don’t mind,’ he said with a chuckle.
‘So I have a piece of glass here, and the problem with that glass is it’s – I don’t look great on television when you have a four inch piece of glass that a howitzer can’t go through,’ he said in reference to the style of cannon.
Trump continued, again pointing to the barrier between himself and the audience: ‘The problem is, when you watch me tonight you’ll say, ‘the President doesn’t look that good.’ Well, how the hell do you look good? Look at the size of this sucker.’
Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said the former president’s remarks had nothing to do with members of the press being harmed and said he was expressing concern over their safety.
‘The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else,’ he said in a statement. ‘It was about threats against him that were spurred on by dangerous rhetoric from Democrats.’
‘In fact, President Trump was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also,’ the campaign communications director explained. ‘There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!’
In an earlier part of the speech on Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate said the results need to be finalized the night of Election Day on November 5.
The former president said any flex time after that date is just used by Democrats to ‘cheat.’
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but for future elections – I won’t be even a part of it – but you ought to damn well go to paper ballots, you ought to go to voter ID and you ought to have the election over by 9 o’clock,’ Trump said.
‘I’m hearing now they’re going to take weeks. Can you imagine?’ he complained.
‘And what do you think happens during those 12 days?’ Trump questioned the crowd, to which they shouted back: ‘They cheat.’
‘These elections have to be – they have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night.’
It continues the former president’s rhetoric building up claims that Democrats again cheated to ‘steal’ the 2024 presidential election after he claims that’s how they won in 2020.