The anti-Trump media is seizing on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump joking the bullet-proof glass was only between him and the media cameras, leaving him unprotected at other openings.
Trump tongue-in-cheek moment was in a speech that featured many new off-script moments as Trump was characteristically charged in the campaign's final hours before Tuesday's election, returning to Pennsylvania, a state where he was once nearly assassinated on July 13.
"This has nothing to do with corruption, but it has everything to do with intelligence," Trump said of the vulnerabilities at his Lititz, Pennsylvania, campaign rally Sunday morning, which aired in part on Newsmax and in full on the free Newsmax2 streaming platform. "I have a piece of glass here, but all we have over here is the fake news, right?
"And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don't mind that so much."
Trump was clearly joking about the glass needing to protect him from the media angle.
After the media picked up on the remarks out of context, the Trump campaign issued a statement denouncing the efforts to smear Trump in the campaign's final hours.
"President Trump was brilliantly talking about the two assassination attempts on his own life, including one that came within 1/4 of an inch from killing him, something that the media constantly talks and jokes about," Trump Campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung wrote in a statement to Newsmax moments after the rally ended.
"The president’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the media being harmed, or anything else. 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. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!"
Trump also joked the placement of the glass between him and the media cameras was to just make him look bad before Tuesday's election.
"The problem with that glass is I don't look great on television when you have a four-inch piece of glass that a howitzer can't go through," Trump continued.
"I don't need it here, but where I do think I need the piece is here," Trump said, going back to the line of sight where a car horn was blaring and he joked was where a would-be assassin would shoot from.
Ultimately, Trump suggested the images of his rally should be unobstructed, assassination attempts be damned.
"When you watch me tonight: 'The president doesn't look that good,'" Trump joked. "Well, how the hell do you look good? Look at the size of this sucker.
"Just to finish up on the glass, because I don't want to spend too much time on the glass, but it does seem kind of ridiculous, doesn't it? I don't need a piece here fellas," Trump joked, pointing directly ahead to the media.
"I need a piece here. I need a piece there.
"You know where I need a piece? Right there. I've got farmhouses. I've got all sorts of sh ... See the guy up in the window back there? Has anybody inspected that?
"But I'm trying to make a point, and I'm trying to sell something. I am telling the people that our leadership is grossly incompetent."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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