President Donald Trump took the stage projecting command, but the performance didn’t hold. Within minutes, the rhythm faltered, the message wobbled, and the moment started slipping into the kind of uncomfortable spectacle that can’t be walked back once it’s underway.
That unraveling played out last week during Trump’s remarks at the 74th annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where critics say his fixation on past election grievances once again overtook the message and left his wounded ego exposed in front of a captive audience.
Astonishingly enough, Trump even admitted it.
An at times slurring Trump rambled for a full hour and 15 minutes at the bipartisan event in Washington on Thursday, Feb. 5, going off script and distracting himself with musings over how he was wronged in 2020 and even 2016, when he won the presidential election in a surprise victory over Democratic contender Hillary Clinton.
But what Trump has never gotten over about his first and, at that time, only election win ever was that he lost the popular vote to the former secretary of state.
She won it by almost 3 million ballots, something that has stuck in Trump’s craw and which he has continually denied he lost over the past 10 years.
Trump waxed on about it again at the Prayer Breakfast, but he made a startling admission.
“They rigged the second election. I had to win it. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego,” Trump stunningly admitted while leaning heavily on the podium and at times speaking in a weak voice.
“I would have had a bad ego for the rest of mine [my life]. Now, I really have a big ego. Though, beating this, beating these lunatics, was incredible. What a great deal winning every swing state, winning the popular vote first time,” he boasted unrelentingly.
Social media took no prisoners, calling out Trump’s depraved ramblings.
One user kicked things off with a blunt reveal, “He sounds insane. Like article 25 bonkers. Incoherent and rambling.”
X user Bill the Beaver vented in disbelief, “Did the President really say that he needed to win the election for his own ego? He doesn’t actually care about the country or the people (if this wasn’t already painfully obvious) it’s all about him. It always has been, it always will be. What a scumbag. I’m sorry America.”
Another X user, Earl Pulse agreed, “That is Trump! That is the paradox he never hides. Total confidence mixed with grievance, ego laid bare and reframed as virtue. To supporters it is honesty; to critics it is disqualifying. Either way, he says the quiet part out loud; power, pride, and personal vindication driving the narrative.”
This poster gave Trump a little grace, “I needed it for my ego…is the most honest thing he’s ever said …He lost the popular vote twice, lost the 2020 election, and now admits it was about his ego…at least he’s finally being honest about the motive.”
Trump’s ramblings didn’t end there. He then veered into rehashing the 2016 election and made almost no sense at all.
“You know, they said, I didn’t win the popular vote. I did,” he falsely claimed, before launching into a bizarre story about how, “They always say, ‘While Donald Trump did not win the popular vote,” they always say, ‘while Donald Trump did not win the popular vote,’ you know, sitting up against they said, ‘while Donald Trump did not win the popular vote, he won the president.’”
It’s unclear when Trump was ever introduced by any Democrat in such a manner.
But it’s really his loss in the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden that he’s obsessed with and will go to any length to deny Biden won, claiming it was a “stolen” election without any proof and even after plenty of court decisions ruling that it was free and fair.
Trump has spent years stoking conspiracy theories about how he really won the 2020 election while pretending he’s not the one who tried to steal it through a riot on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol and through a slate of fake electors to the electoral College, which he didn’t get away with. Biden ended up beating him by 7 million votes.
