President Donald Trump veered off topic during a speech to military commanders with a brief song-and-dance about walking carefully down stairs.
The president joined Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who ordered hundreds of top U.S. military leaders to leave their posts around the world for an unprecedented gathering at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, where Trump spoke for nearly an hour and 15 minutes about a variety of topics – including launching several attacks against former President Joe Biden.
"These were the Washingtongenerals, and I call themthe television generals, but'Raising' [Gen. Dan] Caine did it in four weeks, took out 100 percent ofthe ISIS caliphate," he said.
"As a result of these actions and many others since my inauguration, we're witnessing the triumphant returnof peace through strength.We have great peace throughstrength, and America isrespected as a country, and wewere not respected with Biden.They looked at him fallingdown stairs, and every day thatguy is falling downstairs, andthey said it is not ourpresident and we cannot have it."
"I'm very careful when I walkeddown stairs, and I go down stairs,like these stairs, I walk veryslowly," he added. "Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn't work out well.A few of our presidents have fallen and it became part of theirlegacy – we don't like that.You do not have to set anyrecord. You have to walk nice and easy, you don't have to set any record. Be cool, be cool when you walk down, butdon't bop down the stairs."
He then went on to praise another predecessor, Barack Obama, for his nimble negotiations of stairways — punctuated with some rhythmic scat singing and some dance moves.
"That is one thing with Obama," Trump said. "Ihave zero respect for him as apresident but he would bop down those stairs [like] I've never seen – da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He'd go down the stairs, wouldn't hold on, and I said, that's great. I wouldn't want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president."