Trump vs. the baby, Round 2
Campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday afternoon, Donald Trump denounced the media for overplaying his exchange with the mother of a crying baby at a rally three days earlier. He spent several minutes discussing the incident and then returned to it near the close of his speech.
“I don’t throw babies out, believe me. I love babies. I love my children. I love babies. I don’t throw babies out, believe me,” Trump assured his fans.
The remarks came in the midst of an attack on his rival Hillary Clinton and illustrated, Trump said, how his campaign was “bucking the press.” He said the media’s coverage of the incident illustrated how unfair reporters are.
“You know, an interesting thing happened. I was in Florida, we have these massive crowds,” he recalled. “Massive crowds. Thousands of people had to be turned away. But massive crowds. At one of the events, a beautiful baby was crying. And I mean crying like you wouldn’t believe,” he continued.
Trump evidently misspoke about the location of the incident; it was in Virginia.
“I jokingly said, ‘You know what? That’s OK. Let the baby cry, we love babies.’ You know, something to that effect: ‘We love babies.’”
However, Trump said, the baby “just went on” during his speech to the “thousands of people in the room.” He compared the child to the famous Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti and joked that he would find the parents in order to train their kid as an opera singer.
“I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to counteract my order. Beautiful baby — if you take her outside, that’s not so bad,’” he said. “The press came out with headlines: ‘Trump throws baby out of arena.’ So dishonest. I mean, these are dishonest people.”
Trump said an Iowa reporter even came up to him and asked, “Mr. Trump, how do you feel about throwing that baby out of the arena in Florida?”
“It’s so disgusting what’s going on with the media,” he reflected. “So disgusting. That’s why we have to win. We have to win. We have to win.”
