Former President Donald Trump delivered unusual and vulgar remarks Saturday about the late golf legend Arnold Palmer while campaigning in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, as the campaign enters the final stretch to Election Day.
The former president spoke for more than 10 minutes about Palmer, who was born in Latrobe, at a rally at the local airport named in Palmer’s honor.
“He was an incredible man, he was an incredible champion, and he came from Latrobe,” Trump said.
Then his comments appeared to go off script.
“This is a guy that was all man,” the former president said. “This man was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.'”
To laughter, Trump added, “I had to say it.”
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Trump noted that he’s been to Latrobe and told the story before, but “not in this kind of detail.”
Palmer’s daughter Peg Palmer Wears said in 2018 that her father, a political conservative who died in 2016 shortly before Trump was elected, was “appalled” by Trump.
“What would my dad think of Donald Trump today? I think he’d cringe,” she told author Thomas Hauser then.
On Sunday, she told The Associated Press that she is “not really upset” about Trump’s remark, saying “there’s nothing much to say.”
“I think it was a poor choice of approaches to remembering my father, but what are you going to do?” Palmer Wears said.
Later in his remarks, Trump led the crowd in a call-and-response about the Biden-Harris administration’s economic and foreign policy record, saying “everything they touch turns to…” as the crowd chimed in with the expletive.
“You have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore. We can’t stand you. You’re a s-– vice president. The worst,” Trump said to the crowd about his Democratic rival. “You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’re fired.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked repeatedly about Trump’s Arnold Palmer comments on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, but he pivoted to Harris’ record, saying, “put the rhetoric aside.”
“This shouldn’t be about personalities, it should be about policies,” Johnson said.
Meanwhile, Harris has been calling Trump’s mental state into question on the campaign trail in recent days, while sharpening her criticism of the former president. On Saturday, she told reporters that Trump is “becoming increasingly unstable and unhinged.”
“The American people are seeing it, witnessing it in real time,” she added.
