Former President Donald Trump sparked controversy at a Saturday campaign rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, where he slipped the “N-word” into a raucous speech about his ongoing legal troubles.
The unforced error occurred as Trump attempted to say the word “indictment” but instead blurted out “N-word” in an apparent Freudian slip before quickly correcting himself in his next breath.
“My whole life, I didn’t know what the N-word — I didn’t know what indictment meant,” the GOP front-runner fumed before hundreds of his supporters after a judge ordered him to pay $355 million as part of a crushing civil fraud verdict in New York.
Trump’s speech dripped with grievances and led to immediate speculation whether the “N-word” miscue was intentional, as Trump has been known for stirring racial tensions with innuendo and dog whistles aimed at riling up his MAGA base.
The speech immediately raised eyebrows among Democrats, who shared the short clip on social media to highlight the latest moment in which Trump might have revealed his true private sentiments about Black people.
The White House seized on the controversy to divert attention from recent criticism aimed at President Joe Biden’s age following a special counsel investigation into classified documents that found no misconduct but raised concerns about Biden’s mental acuity.
During Saturday’s speech, Trump turned boastful, comparing his legal plight to that of one-time Chicago mob boss Al Capone.
“[I] got indicted more than Alphonse Capone, Scarface,” Trump said, asserting that his legal fight symbolized his connection with disenchanted voters.
“I’m just doing something for incredible people — it’s called the American people,” Trump said in a familiar refrain from previous speeches on the campaign trail.
“Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of honor, I am being indicted for you,” Trump said.
Trump also took aim at China, migrant workers, and the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border as the state’s presidential primary was just days away on Feb. 27.
Although Trump has never been recorded using the actual N-word, it appears he has gone out of his way at times to inject the euphemism for the racial term into matters where it doesn’t seem to fit.
During a 2022 interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, Trump strangely used “the N-word” to describe the word “nuclear” while discussing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public comments about atomic weapons.
“Putin uses the ‘N-word’. I call it the ‘N-word’. He uses the ‘N-word’, the nuclear word all the time. That’s a no-no, you’re not supposed to do that,” Trump said, which was widely seen as bizarre and vastly out of context with the term’s typical usage as a reference to a racial slur.
Similarly, the Republican front-runner committed the same faux pas this past weekend as he expressed anger over the staggering penalties in two New York civil cases in which he was found guilty of business fraud and defamation.
Notably, the civil fraud case was a major victory for New York Attorney General Letitia James, the first Black woman to hold the office, after Trump continuously targeted her throughout the trial.
The penalty handed down last week by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron was intended to punish Trump for inflating the asset value of his real estate properties, including his hotels and golf clubs, which over time cheated banks and insurers out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
As part of the ruling, Engoron banned the former president from doing business in New York for three years, while days earlier, Trump was also ordered to pay $83 million in a separate civil judgment for author E. Jean Carroll.
The two rulings could prove devastating to Trump’s business empire as he faced interest payments that could push the penalties to more than $450 million, a sum that Trump described as “bitterness and revenge … for doing everything right,” he said Saturday.
“This judge is a lunatic,” Trump ranted while wearing his trademark red ball cap with “Make America Great Again” emblazoned on the front. “I knew I would lose a billion or $2 billion if I was honest running for president and being president,” Trump said. “It was the best thing I ever did.”
Trump also called Engoron “one of the least respected” judges in New York while blasting the verdicts, saying, “Our court system is a mess.”
“It’s a disgusting thing. I deal in the bank. The bank is happy. There’s no victims,” he said. “Nobody is going back to New York State. A lot of people are leaving — a lot of businesses.”
Trump said he met with members of the United Auto Workers backstage before his address in which he railed against the “repulsive abuses of power.”
During the rant, Trump accused Biden of orchestrating the civil and criminal cases against him to thwart his run for a second term, while Trump vowed to go after his political enemies if reelected.
“Congress ought to impeach crooked Joe Biden for attacking his political opponent by weaponizing, the DOJ, FBI, and even local DAs and attorney generals against his opponent — me,” Trump said.
“If we win Michigan, we’re going to win the election,” Trump declared.
Separately, Trump faces criminal trial this spring after being indicted for his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as well as a similar case in Georgia after he was indicted with 19 co-defendants in connection with a racketeering conspiracy.
Additionally, Trump was hit with a federal indictment in Florida last summer on 37 counts for his alleged mishandling of classified documents that were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office.
Trump is also scheduled to go on trial to face 34 felony charges related to a hush-money scheme involving former adult film star Stormy Daniels.
