President Donald Trump once again dove into familiar grievances during a rally-style speech on Friday in which he relitigated the 2020 election – and complained at length about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, including what he said happened to First Lady Melania Trump’s underwear drawer.
As he has repeatedly done, Trump returned to his false, five-year-old claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” telling the crowd that Americans went to bed believing he had won, only to wake up to a different result. He again suggested the outcome was fraudulent, adding: “By the way, you have not heard the last of that.”
Trump then pivoted to the 2022 FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago beach resort, framing it as a personal and political attack. He told the audience he was not home when agents arrived to conduct “a raid of a popular president, a former president,” before launching into an unusual digression about his wife.
Describing Melanie Trump as “a very meticulous person,” Trump told the crowd of rallygoers that the First Lady makes sure “everything is perfect” with her belongings.
“Her undergarments – always nice, sometimes referred to as panties – are folded perfect, wrapped. They’re like, so perfect. I think that she steams them, makes sure they’re just sitting.”
According to the president, that order was disrupted during the search. “She opened the drawers, and it was not that way,” he said. “They were a mess. It was all over the place.” He claimed agents also went into his son’s room, declaring, “These thugs are disgusting, and we cannot let them get away with this stuff.”
“We have all the evidence now,” Trump added. “We have to do something about it! It’s illegal, and it’s disgusting.”
As Trump’s speech passed the one-hour mark, people in the crowd began to walk out, The New York Times reported Friday. Some rallygoers on stage behind the MAGA leader could also be seen on a live feed leaving the stage as Trump continued to speak for nearly 90 minutes.
“If I didn’t get elected, our country would be ruined; we would’ve not have had a country,” he told the crowd. “I’m not bragging about myself; I’m saying we would not have had a country. And now we have the greatest country in the world. I’m telling you – we’re the hottest.”
Trump made no mention of the release of records related to Jeffrey Epstein during his Friday night remarks in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.