President Donald Trump offered a rambling and muddled response when challenged on his threat to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and he finally landed on an attempt to change the subject.
The governor invited the president to "come walk the streets with us" after threatening to deploy National Guard troops to Baltimore, which Trump has called "crime ridden," and he threatened to withhold funding to rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, and a reporter challenged him on the threat.
"No, we were very generous to him on a bridge," Trump began. "You know, a boat ran into a bridge, and the bridge came down, like, I've never seen anything – the boat was just, it just shows you the mass of that boat, the power of that boat. You know, people were up on that bridge, painters, they were painting the bridge and they were watching it happen, and they thought they were very safe – they all died. They were painting the bridge, can you imagine, and they watched the boat."
"The engines were off and they watched the boat and the power of that boat, the mass of that boat went right through that steel, just like it was nothing," he added. "It's amazing. It's called mass, mass is a big deal. But the mass of that boat, those people all died, but they were they thought they were totally safe."
The container ship Dali lost all power on March 26, 2024, and struck the bridge causing its collapse just before 1:30 a.m. while construction workers were on a break from filling potholes, killing six men from Latin American countries.
"Two of them were eating their lunch, they were, you know, whatever, they were watching it, they could have gotten off," Trump continued. "Somebody did a very good job, a police officer called in and said, 'close the bridge,' and he did it with power – get everybody off the bridge, close that. That guy should get a medal because he stopped the bridge. A lot of people would have died, a lot more people would have died."
"The ones that died were the workers on the bridge, and they they were just they thought there was no danger because, you know, it's a big steel bridge, and it came down like, like toothpicks," Trump said. "It was incredible to watch that. It was just, and they died, they all died."
The ship's pilot made a mayday call moments before the massive boat struck the bridge, which allowed local law enforcement to stop additional traffic from driving onto the doomed span, but attorneys for two of the men dumped into the water, including one survivor, say the crew was not warned about the imminent collision.
"But that police officer, again, the police do a great job," Trump told reporters. "The police officer did an amazing job and I heard the tapes. He would say, 'Get everybody off.' Most people wouldn't have said that. You know, when you see a thing like that, you assume it's going to, you know, tap the bridge and it's going to be rebuffed. The thing just came down. I've never seen anything like it, so he did a good job."
A Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) issued an order to stop traffic in both directions on the bridge moments before the collision, and patrol officers swiftly enacted the order and successfully halted traffic, and Trump seemed to settle on giving at least one of them a medal after trying to evade answering the question about his threat to the governor.
"In fact, i think we should get him in for a medal, the man that gave the warning," Trump said. "I listened to him – 'everybody get off,' screaming, 'everybody off.' He had the sense to realize that this could be a catastrophe as opposed to a ship, that because the engines weren't working, it's just floating. It's an amazing thing that a thing floating like that with no power just knocked it right down like it was like it was nothing. Let's do that, let's give him a medal. I've been thinking about it."