Trump's boast backfires as he repeats Melania's 'what was wrong with you' jab: report

President Donald Trump went looking for praise from his wife after a recent rally, then shared her stinging verdict with a crowd.

Speaking at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, as he stumped for Republican candidates ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, Trump recounted a phone call with first lady Melania Trump that followed one of his earlier rallies, The Mirror reported Saturday.

At the earlier event, Trump had done an impression of former President Joe Biden struggling to locate a set of stairs. According to Trump, Melania saw the footage and was less than impressed when he called her afterward.

"First lady, let me ask you a question. How great was I tonight?" Trump said he asked her. "How good a speech was that? We have a crowd, we have 58,000 people. Darling, how good was I?"

Her answer, as Trump told it, was "Well, what was wrong with you? You couldn't find your way off the stairs."

It's unclear from the account whether Melania was referring to the Biden impression or to Trump himself having trouble with the stairs. A clip of the exchange quickly made the rounds on social media while the rally was still going on.

The 80-year-old president has been traveling the country to boost Republicans before Election Day on Nov. 3, though his schedule has been anything but steady. A Kansas rally planned for Saturday was scrapped, with Trump opting for a handful of tele-rallies instead, and a Nov. 1 stop in Iowa was also called off. On Friday, he announced his weekend events were back on.

Florida voters will choose between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly for governor, while Republican Ashley Moody faces Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon in a special election for a U.S. Senate seat.

The phone call anecdote isn't the only recent moment of apparent friction between the couple. On Thursday, after the Trumps handed out candy to about 6,000 trick-or-treaters on the South Lawn, the president reached for his wife's hand outside the White House. Melania briefly took it before letting go and heading inside, a moment that viewers quickly picked apart online, per The Mirror.