Donald Trump sparked shock and outrage during his Pennsylvania rally on Saturday with a bizarre 10-minute tribute to golf legend Arnold Palmer.
Appearing on the stage in Pennsylvania’s Latrobe, Trump talked for around 90 minutes. He spent an extraordinary length of time with Palmer, who was born in the city in Western Pennsylvania and died in 2016.
The GOP presidential leader described Palmer as “all man” and emphasised on a the late golfer’s biography by saying that “when he took showers with other pros, they came out of there and they said, ‘Oh my god, that’s unbelievable’.”
Trump even stated that he “had to say it,” but refrained from saying anything more direct, out of respect for the “highly sophisticated” women in the audience.
While the attendees at the rally laughed at his remarks, the social media response was critical of the comments and expressed outrage, with Thinktank Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) founder and president Richard Hanania sharing his video on social media.
“Imagine stuff he’ll be saying when his brain is four years older than this,” he wrote.
Trump’s raunchy remarks on Palmer draws flak
Meanwhile, communications strategist TJ Adams-Falconer highlighted that Trump spoke for 15 minutes and ended his speech with “a story about the size” of Arnold Palmer’s genitals.
Pablo Torre, sportswriter and television host, joked, “A nonzero number of Americans are voting for Trump so they can call stuff ‘gay’ again and meanwhile their guy’s out here lost in a reverie about the late Arnold Palmer’s literal penis.”
In a tweet, Republicans against Trump stressed that Palmer was “appalled” by Trump as per his daughter Peg. “He (Palmer) was appalled by Trump’s lack of civility and what he began to see as Trump’s lack of character,” she stated in 2020.
News organisations were compelled to draw attention to Trump’s statements, with NJ.com calling them “crude,” the Daily Mail terming the incident as “bizarre,” and Politico labelling them as simply “raunchy.”