Trump rants on why he shuffled on ramp and couldn't hold glass of water: 'All those 600 salutes made me tired'
President Donald Trump, during his Tulsa rally on Saturday, June 20, gave a long-winded account of his strange behavior last weekend when he appeared to be shuffling down a ramp at West Point and struggled to hold a glass of water with one hand. The incident had led to speculations of the president having Parkinson's.
Trump, while speaking during his first rally amid the coronavirus pandemic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recounted the last weekend's incident for at least 10 minutes. He told his supporters that he was made aware of the uproar by first lady Melania Trump. "She said: 'They mention the fact that you may have Parkinson's disease,'" the Republican told the crowd, and then went on to explain that the ramp off the state at West Point was "like an ice skating rink."
The president then went on to reenact the scene as he exaggerated his shuffle and said: "So, I was bent over..." Trump added that at the time he had told a general that he was wearing "leather bottom shoes," which were "not good for ramps." Trump said that at the time he was mindful of Gerald Ford falling down the steps of a plane in 1975, and of George HW Bush fainting after vomiting in the lap of the Japanese prime minister in 1992. "No way I can make it down that ramp without falling on my ass," the Republican recounted telling the general.
Trump added that the stage there was "higher than this one" in Oklahoma, and then laughed off the mockery of him having to use two hands to drink a glass of water. The Republican explained that he was struggling with the glass of the water last weekend because his arms were tired from saluting. "Six hundred times!... It’s like a workout without a weight," Trump said while addressing the Tulsa crowd in the BOC center. The president then exclaimed that he was capable of drinking water with one hand and then demonstrated it to his followers.
The president had talked about the incident earlier this week too in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, June 17. Trump in the interview stated that the ramp he was walking on was "like an ice skating rink" and that he wore leather-soled shoes, which made it difficult for him to walk on the ramp.
Trump, during the Tulsa rally, however, falsely claimed that he "ran down the rest" of the way. Video from his appearance shows that he slowly walked the entire distance. The president has claimed that news networks cut out the clip of him running the rest of the way. "I looked very handsome," he said. "I took these little steps, then I ran down."
Vice President Mike Pence, and the president's son Eric Trump also spoke at the rally before Trump began his speech. Multiple critics, in the week leading up to the rally, had expressed concerns at the health implications of a gathering of thousands of people inside an arena at a time when coronavirus cases were rising in the city.