President Donald Trump on Wednesday ridiculed former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and bragged about the crowd size at one of his rallies while visiting medical staff who treated victims of the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, over the weekend.
“So, I don’t know if you know it because you’ve been pretty busy lately, right?
But they’re talking about you all over the world,” Trump told hospital employees during a stop at University Medical Center of El Paso, according to a“The job you’ve done is incredible, and they’re talking about you all over the world,” Trump continued, before turning to praise the doctor who introduced him to the staff.
“It’s an honor to be with you. Look at this group of people, can you believe this? I was here three months ago, we made a speech,” Trump said. “And we had a — what was the name of the arena? That place was packed, right?”
Trump last traveled to El Paso in February to host a “Make America Great Again” campaign rally. O’Rourke, a Texas Democrat who until earlier this year represented the vast majority of El Paso in Congress, held a competing rally in the Southwestern border town that same night, railing against the administration’s immigration agenda and the president’s proposal to build a wall separating the U.
S. and Mexico.When one the people Trump was addressing said Wednesday he was sitting in the front row of Trump’s rally earlier this year, the president reached out to shake his hand.
“That was some crowd, and we had twice the number outside,” Trump replied. “And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had, like, 400 people in a parking lot. They said, ‘His crowd was wonderful.’”
The employee then pulled up one of his pants legs to show off to the president a sock emblazoned with the word “Trump.”
“Dont tell it to the press because they won’t even believe it,” Trump remarked, appearing to pantomime reporters’ reactions to the result of the 2016 presidential election.
“On the day of the vote they say, ‘What happened, what happened?’” Trump said. “I want to thank everybody. How do we get some kind of a picture here?”
The El Paso Fire Department has previously denied the president’s claims regarding the number of people at his rally, and the Trump campaign has yet to reimburse the city roughly a half million dollars for the cost of the event.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine