Donald Trump’s bizarre rambling during his one-year anniversary in office speech where he chose to boast about his prowess on the baseball diamond when he was younger, led to no small measure of comedy on MS NOW on Wednesday morning.
During Trump's almost hour an half stream-of-consciousness televised talk, he recalled that his mother told him he had a future as a professional baseball player.
Specifically, he said, “I was quite the baseball player, you wouldn’t believe,” before adding that his mother told him, “Son, you could be a professional baseball player,” to which he would reply, “Thanks, mom.”
After watching the clip, co-host Willie Geist dryly observed, “Trying to follow along there, Jonathan Lemire, talking about his baseball career. John Heilemann has some fact checks on what kind of hitter he was. We've seen him throw a ball, not a guy who probably played catch with his dad a lot,” which led Lemire and “Morning Joe” regular Mike Barnicle to burst out laughing.
"So what, I mean, it's just objective. Those of us who played sports, we know an athlete when we see one,” Geist continued.
After Lemire attempted to make sense of some of the president’s remarks, the sports-minded MS NOW panel felt compelled to return to talking about Trump as a baseball player.
“Actually, his predecessor, Joe Biden, was a pretty good baseball player,” Barnicle noted. “Yeah, very good baseball player.”
“Now we're turning to you,” he continued as he addressed guest John Heilemann, “Career stats, Donald Trump, Little League.”
“Well," Heilemann began. “Let's be first of all, let's be clear. Donald Trump long ago –– it's not the first time Trump has touted himself. Back in 2000, 2010, he did an interview with MTV where he said he could have been a major league baseball player.”
“In 2013, he did an interview in which he said that he was the best high school player in New York State,” he added, which led to more laughter. “You know, a state of 20-some million people. There has been some research done on this, not by me, but has been, has been looked into. Now the records are limited, but according to the records of one journalist who dug into this and found the box scores from his time at New York Military Academy, he hit .138.”
“He was four for 29 in only 9 games is the only records that exist so far, according to this journalist,” he added. “ But he had three RBI’s and one run scored in those games. It doesn't strike you, obviously, as the performance of the greatest best-at-the-time baseball player in high school sports in New York.”
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