President Donald Trump cracked wise about attempts on his life during a dinner for $TRUMP memecoin investors.
After a sudden pop from what appears to have been a balloon bursting in the audience at his Virginia golf club, the president made light of an assassination attempt at a July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“My ear!” the president exclaimed in reference to the rifle shot that grazed him. “That was amazing, very strange noise. That brings back some not-such-good memories.”
Newly emerged footage of the event obtained by Mediaite has circulated online. The gag prompted peals of laughter from the crowd, which began to chant “fight! fight! fight!” as Trump had done while being escorted offstage after the incident last year.
Trump’s ad-lib recalled a similar joke made by former President Ronald Reagan in 1987, when the late president quipped, “missed me,” after a balloon similarly popped halfway through one of his speeches at an event in West Berlin.
Reagan had also suffered an attempt on his life six years prior, when in 1981 he was shot in the lung outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr.
Trump’s gala dinner for memecoin investors, which was closed to both the public and the press, took place under a shroud of secrecy on Thursday night amid widespread and mounting outcry over the crypto-venture, which critics from both sides of the political divide have slammed as a barefaced illicit enrichment scheme.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the event by insisting the president was attending the dinner during his “personal time” rather than in his capacity as head of state.
Attendees have since said they were underwhelmed by both the quality of service and the president’s apparent unwillingness to engage with the majority of his guests, who are reported to have shelled out an average of $1.7 million a seat.
“The food sucked. Wasn’t given any drinks other than water or Trump’s wine,” one person told CNBC. “[Trump] didn’t talk to any of the 220 guests—maybe the top 25.”
The gag about last year’s attempt on his life in Pennsylvania wasn’t the only joke Trump made for the audience throughout the course of the evening, with him later moving on to also cracking wise at his former President Joe Biden’s expense.
“The other administration, I don’t know if they became believers [in crypto], if they should have ever won, which I never felt … I couldn’t believe it … could you imagine losing to Joe?” the president said.
