Former President Donald Trump's cosplay as a garbage truck driver nearly met with disaster after he appeared to miss the door handle on the vehicle's passenger side and nearly lost his footing. He eventually got the door open and, after briefly clutching his right thigh, climbed into the seat with some effort.
Trump later 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, still wearing an orange vest. “I said they didn’t have to buy it that big, right? You have to get it that big?” But Trump said he counted himself lucky that he managed to get in, since the "fake news" was watching. “So the first stair’s like up here,” he said, raising his arm to his waist, though the stair was knee height. “I said, ‘sh*t.’ So I had the adrenaline going and I made it.”
The garbage truck photo-op came after a furor surrounding the use of the word "garbage" in the last full week of the presidential campaign. Trump, who had previously called the United States a "garbage can," likening immigrants to trash, faced a wave of criticism after hosting a rally in which Tony Hinchcliffe, a right-wing comedian, called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage." Trump has refused to disavow the remark.
Later, President Joe Biden made a stumble of his own while talking to a group of Latino allies.
"The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Biden said. The president later clarified that he was referring specifically to Hinchcliffe's remarks, not all of Trump's supporters, but Trump and his allies jumped on the comment.
“According to the Democratic Party, millions of Americans just like you and me, we are a basket of irredeemable deplorables. We are racist, sexist, fascist-loving Nazis who cling to our God, our guns, our Bibles, our religion. And now, apparently the top Democrat in the White House thinks that we are also garbage," complained Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, who has never criticized Trump for calling Democrats the "enemy within" or threatening to turn the U.S. military against his political opponents.
Hannity, meanwhile, was all praise for the man who referred to the entire country as a receptacle for trash.
“This may go down as an iconic, epic moment that we will remember for a long time," he said of Wednesday's photo op. "Donald Trump hitching a very special ride on a garbage truck decked out in American flags, MAGA gear," he said before airing video of the former president nearly falling over.
