Trump Gets His Own Father’s Birthplace Wrong in Rambling White House Exchange
President Donald Trump got his own father’s birthplace wrong during a rambling exchange at a photo op with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House on Tuesday.
The president and Chancellor Merz gave remarks and answered questions from reporters in the Oval Office, during which Trump was peppered with questions about the war with Iran, which is being carried out without congressional approval.
At one point, Trump delivered a tirade about Spain that prompted a follow-up question to Chancellor Merz, who spent about 30 seconds answering it.
As reporters began shouting more questions, Trump launched into a falsehood-riddled rant that included the false claim that his own father was born in Germany:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They’ve been very– Spain has been very very uncooperative and so has U.K.
Now the second one is shocking, but this is not the age of Churchill. I will say the U.K. has been, very very, uncooperative.
With that stupid island that they have that they gave away and took a hundred-year lease, having to do with perhaps indigenous people claiming the island, that never even saw the island before. What’s that all about?
And they ruin relationships. It’s a shame. And that country, U.K., and I love that country. I love it.
My mother was born there. I love. My mother, was born there.
My father was born–. (GESTURES TO GERMAN CHANCELLOR He knows all about my father. My father was born there.
So, you know, there are places that you sort of automatically very, very feel warmly about.
But the U.K., what they’re doing with energy and what they are doing with immigration is horrible.
President Trump’s father Fred Trump was born in the Bronx in New York City, a fact that seems to come and go from Trump’s knowledge base. He made the Germany claim during the same 2019 photo op where he repeatedly referenced the “oranges” of the Mueller investigation.
Trump also made the claim in a CBS News interview in 2018 and in a 2020 Fox News interview. But other times, he has made the more accurate claim that his father’s parents were from Germany, as he did just a few months ago.
Watch above via CNN.
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