President Donald Trump on Friday used a Rose Garden luncheon to mark the upcoming Mother’s Day holiday to ramble about his renovations to the area, bash his predecessor repeatedly and boast about extrajudicial killings of suspected drug smugglers as he addressed a group of Gold Star mothers.
The president opened his speech to an audience of military parents and other guests by discussing the merits of the stone patio he used to pave over the grass in the rose garden designed during the Kennedy Administration, claiming that it was impossible for anyone to walk on the grass because the White House “was built on a wetland, and the grass was always soaking wet,” and suggesting that his Agriculture Secretary could not properly deliver remarks because she was too concerned with damage to her expensive footwear.
“When Brooke Rollins would get up and start making a magnificent speech, and she’d be standing in mud, and she’d say, ‘I ruined my shoes’ — her speeches would never be as good as they could have been, because she was always concerned about ruining her shoes,” he said.
“But people would come here, women would come with the high heels, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. So after about 100 years, we gave up in the grass.”
Trump then pivoted to the topic at hand, Mother’s Day, which he said is intended for “honoring the women who raised us and all of the wonderful mothers in our lives” and noted the presence both of Gold Star mothers — who’ve lost children in military service — as well as what right-wing activists call “Angel Moms,” mothers of people who’ve been killed by anyone in the country without legal status.
“Among those with us this afternoon are a number of the angel moms who saw their precious children stolen from them by the open border policies of the radical left open borders. I call them stupid borders, not open I call them stupid borders by stupid people that put them there and the migrant criminals that let they, let them pour into our country. And bad things happened,” he said.
He then offered a bizarre, far-fetched example of the Congo allegedly dumping prisoners into the U.S. via the Southern border as justification for his attack on the previous administration.
“They emptied the prisons of the Congo into the area of the southern border, and they told them to just walk in, because stupid Americans are going to accept you beautifully. And these were hard, mean, vicious criminals they allowed into our country. How anybody can vote for these people is hard to believe,” he said.
After he claimed that the U.S. has stopped any fentanyl trafficking into the country “by sea” because of his administration’s campaign of extrajudicial killings against people on boats the Pentagon alleges to be drug-running vessels, he took note of the Gold Star mothers in the audience and used their presence to pivot to another partisan attack on the Biden administration — this time for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan under terms set by his negotiators during the waning months of his first term.
“I also want to express my love for the moms with us whose extraordinary heroes gave their lives in the terrorist attack at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan,” said Trump, referencing the August 26, 2021 bombing by an ISIS-K operative which killed 13 U.S. service members during the withdrawal.
“That should have never happened — that was incompetence by the Biden administration,” he added.
After several more minutes of boasts about other administration policies, Trump thanked the attendees for coming and said it was “so important we do things like we keep men out of women’s sports.”
“We stopped transgender mutilization of your children for everyone, we don’t have that. But I want to thank single mother here this afternoon and all across our nation for your work every single day,” he said.
