Trump 'stumbled' repeatedly while trying to read the Constitution on camera: 'It's like a foreign language'
President Donald Trump reportedly struggled to read through a passage of the US Constitution while filming a documentary and thought the wordings in it were "like a foreign language," according to a recent book written by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.
Trump made the statement while he was filming a documentary produced by Alexandra Pelosi, the daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As Trump fumbled while reading out a few lines from the Constitution, he blamed the missteps on others in the room, including the film crew. "You know, your paper was making a lot of noise," Trump complained of the script. “It’s tough enough.”
An excerpt from the highly-anticipated book 'A Very Stable Genius' by Washington Post reporters stated that the president grew increasingly irritated while reading the arcane words from the Constitution.
"With LED lights on stilts in front of him, Trump took his seat. 'You’re lucky you got the easy part,' Pelosi told him cheerfully. 'It gets complicated after this.' But the president stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the founding fathers had written. Trump grew irritated. 'It’s very hard to do because of the language here,' Trump told the crew. 'It’s very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble.' He added, 'It’s like a different language, right?' The cameraman tried to calm Trump, telling him it was no big deal, to take a moment and start over. Trump tried again, but again remarked, 'It’s like a foreign language,'" an excerpt from the book read.
The reading of the Constitution was organized by Pelosi as part of a documentary titled 'The Words That Built America'. The book describes the film as a "conceit" based on the idea that America's “founding documents remained a unifying force for the nation’s factions” in the aftermath of the divisive 2016 presidential election. Reports state that the filming for the reading occurred in the White House Blue Room nearly six weeks after Trump was sworn in on the same document he reportedly struggled to read for the documentary.
According to the book, the former acting US Solicitor General Neal Katyal witnessed the president's apparent lack of familiarity with the constitution and described it as "meta."
President Trump slammed the book ahead of its release on January 21, 2020, saying it was "inaccurately reported."
"Another Fake Book by two third rate Washington Post reporters has already proven to be inaccurately reported, to their great embarrassment, all for the purpose of demeaning and belittling a President who is getting great things done for our Country, at a record clip,” the president tweeted over the weekend. “Thank you!”