Donald Trump’s photo-op with a garbage truck on Wednesday almost got off to a disastrous start as the former president appeared to miss the door handle and almost slipped on the wet ground.
Trump also briefly grabbed his right thigh, then ultimately made it into the truck with some visible effort.
The moment takes place at about 15 seconds into the C-SPAN coverage of the photo-op:
Trump later in the evening said that the truck was too big.
“I said how the hell do you get into this truck? It’s way up high,” he said at a rally in Wisconsin. “I said they didn’t have to buy it that big, right? You have to get it that big?”
He said he realized how embarrassing it would be if he couldn’t get into the truck with the “fake news” watching.
“So the first stair’s like up here,” he said, raising his arm to his waist, although the stair was actually at knee height. “I said, ‘Shit.’ So I had the adrenaline going and I made it.”
Trump’s trashy photo-op comes after a comic at his campaign rally in New York City on Sunday called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” leading to multiple high-profile Latino stars to speak out against Trump, including Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, while reggaeton star Nicky Jam took back his endorsement of Trump.
President Joe Biden stumbled himself ― on his words ― on Tuesday as he was asked about comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist insult of Puerto Rico.
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“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Biden said. He later clarified he was speaking specifically about Hinchcliffe, not all of Trump’s supporters, but many on the right seized on the comment as an insult directed at them.
Trump, for his part, has repeatedly called the entire United States a “garbage can” and attacked Democrats as “the enemy from within” and even suggested that the military could be used against them.