President Donald Trump appeared momentarily stunned after a reporter’s boom mic made contact with his face while he was answering questions from the press at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
The incident happened on Friday as reporters gathered around to ask questions about the day’s events and other topics.
The microphone grazed the president in the mouth as he leaned back to avoid more contact with it. He then turned to the reporter and briefly gave what some have described as a “death stare.”
“She just made television tonight,” Trump quipped moments later about the reporter who struck him. “She just became a big story tonight.”
“Did you see that?” he said to someone off-camera who was laughing at what happened.
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The day before the incident, the president spoke in the Oval Office about the tariffs he is imposing on Canada, saying that they may cause some short-term issues for Americans, but that in the long term, they will benefit the nation.
“In the case of Canada, we’re spending $200 billion a year to subsidize Canada. I love Canada. I love the people of Canada. I love—I have many friends in Canada. The great one, Wayne Gretzky, the great—hey, how good is Wayne Gretzky? He’s the great one,” the president said.
“But we have—I know many people from Canada that are good friends of mine. But, you know, the United States can’t subsidize a country for $200 billion a year. We don’t need their cars. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need anything that they—that they give,” he insisted.
“We do it because we want to be helpful, but it comes a point when you just can’t do that. You have to run your own country. And to be honest with you, Canada only works as a state. It doesn’t—we don’t need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anyway. This would be the most incredible country visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many, many decades ago. And it makes no sense,” he said.
“It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state. Keeping, oh, Canada, the national anthem. I love it. I think it’s great. Keep it. But it’ll be for the state. One of our greatest states. Maybe our greatest state. But why should we subsidize another country for $200 billion?” the president said.
“Of course, there’s $200 billion a year. And again, we don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their energy. We have more than they do. We don’t need anything. We don’t need their cars. I’d much rather make the cars here. And there’s not a thing that we need. Now, there’ll be a little disruption, but it won’t be very long. But they need us. We really don’t need them. And we have to do this. I’m sorry. We have to do this,” he said.
He also took a swipe at one of his most famous rivals, actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who recently moved to Ireland.
When a reporter asked Irish Prime Minister Martin why he permitted the American comedian to move to the country, Trump quickly responded.
“Ireland is known for very happy, fun-loving people,” a reporter noted to Martin at the White House.
“Why in the world would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland?” the reporter asked. “I think she is going to lower your happiness.”
Before Martin could answer, Trump jumped in and responded, “That’s true, I like that question. Do you know you have Rosie O’Donnell? Do you know who she is? You’re better off not knowing.”
