Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the Prescott Valley Event Center in Prescott Valley, Arizona (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
President Donald Trump held a press conference today in which he once again boasted about his November election win and attacked the mainstream media for producing "fake news."
But beyond the usual boasting and bashing, the president made several jaw-dropping statements that were surprising even by his standards. Below, we'll go over the seven craziest moments at today's press conference.
- Trump says that while the leaks coming out of his administration are real, the news stories being written about them are still fake news. When asked to explain the seeming contradiction in his desire to both crack down on leaks in his administration and to attack news stories based on those leaks, the president simply said the leaks from the administration were real, but the news they generated was fake."The leaks are real," Trump said. "The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake."
- Trump falsely claims that his electoral college victory this past November was the biggest since Ronald Reagan's. With 306 electoral college votes, Trump's margin of victory last year was smaller than not only Ronald Reagan's, but also George H.W. Bush's victory in 1988, Bill Clinton's two victories in 1992 and 1996, and Barack Obama's two wins in 2008 and 2012.When confronted by this, Trump simply replied that he "was given that information," without acknowledging that the information was false.
- Trump said he was fine with WikiLeaks because it never leaked classified information. When asked to resolve the contradiction between his current crusade against leaks purportedly coming from the intelligence community and his past praise of WikiLeaks for its leaking of damaging information on Hillary Clinton, Trump falsely claimed that WikiLeaks doesn't leak classified information.
- Trump dismisses GOP town hall protesters because most of them are Democrats. When asked about the rowdy protesters from constituents that many Republican lawmakers have faced at their town halls, Trump dismissed them and said most of those people weren't the people who voted for Republicans in the first place, and thus shouldn't be taken into consideration. "They are not the Republican people that our representatives represent," the president said of the protesters.
- Trump insists that the alternative to getting along with Russia could be "nuclear holocaust." When asked about his repeated praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump once again said that he hoped to get along with the Kremlin, while not guaranteeing that he would be able to do so.Trump then veered off course and said that relations between the two countries were important because otherwise the result could be "nuclear holocaust." "Nuclear holocaust would be like no other," he said. "They're a very powerful nuclear country, so are we."
- Trump shouts down a Jewish reporter who asked him about rising anti-Semitism. When a reporter from a Jewish publication asked Trump to address the rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes around the country, Trump shot back at him for supposedly asking an unfair question. "It's not a fair question," Trump said to the reporter, and then told him to "sit down."Trump then went on to say that he was the least anti-Semitic person in the world.
- Trump asked a black reporter to help him set up a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. When Trump was asked by reporter April Ryan if he'd meet with the CBC, Trump asked her if they were "friends of hers" and then instructed her to "set up a meeting," as he apparently assumed that she knew them because she was black as well.
Watch the full press conference below:
