President Donald Trump is widely known for losing his train of thought and straying from the prepared remarks during public appearances, and he once again lived up to that reputation late last week when a routine White House gathering veered off course after the president drifted into a perplexing aside that left many onlookers shaking their heads.
The moment occurred on Thursday, March 5, at the White House, where Trump was hosting soccer superstar Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami teammates to celebrate the club’s 2025 Major League Soccer Cup championship.
As he lauded the team and their athletic prowess, Trump suddenly began rambling about the deadly U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Tehran.
He began in what appeared to be a normal fashion, repeatedly glancing down at his cue cards.
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“They’re tough and they want to fight, and they’re calling. They’re saying, how do we make a deal?” Trump boasted, referring to the Iranians who offer a different account of events.
“I said, ‘you’re being a little bit late.’ And we want to fight now more than they do,” he continued as members of the soccer team stood beside him in the East Room.
Yet during Trump’s appearance with the soccer team the president suddenly veered off and issued a statement that made little sense.
“We’ve had 47 years, depending on the way you count it, but 47 years of horror with this group. And you know when you see somebody walking down the street without their legs, without their arms, whose face is so badly affected and hurt,” Trump said as his audience managed to maintain a straight face while trying to decipher what he was talking about, even if they connected the 47 years to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Social media offered little comfort, mercilessly pouncing on him for commandeering another event with senseless babble and scant regard for the company in attendance.
“How the f**k can you walk down the street with no legs!” one X user, PJ Garcia, declared in reaction.
Another observer chimed in, “Wait..wtf? ‘walking’ without legs? He’s insane. How can anyone keep a straight face standing behind him.”
“‘…walking…without their legs…’ is that like doing a hand stand without any arms? Just asking,” one X commenter mused.
Another user, Mayra, reposted a clip of Trump’s bizarre remark with only a number and three words: “#25th Amendment Right NOW!”
The wording of Article II, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment leaves room for removing a president who is deemed unfit for office, though it has never been invoked.
But poster Linda Stevens captured the mood for many: “Trump is delusional and nuts. The @GOP has abandoned the American people in its lust and greed for power.”
In less than a week since Trump, along with Israel, launched airstrikes on Iran on Saturday, Feb. 28, six American service members have been killed in an Iranian drone strike on a port in Kuwait.
And while Trump insists he’s fielding calls to strike a deal, Iran’s foreign minister says otherwise.
In an interview aired on “NBC Nightly News” later that day, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, rebuffed Trump’s claims, saying in part, “Negotiate with the U.S. when we negotiated with them twice, and every time they attacked us in the middle of negotiations? So there is no request for a ceasefire by us, and there is no request for the negotiation with the U.S. from us.”
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Iran’s Red Crescent reported that the death toll from Trump’s bombing campaign inside Iran had risen to at least 1,000, according to PBS.
Both Trump and his aides, including Republican lawmakers, continue to offer vague and shifting explanations for the ongoing assault and its intended objective. Trump initially said the action was about regime change in the Islamic Republic, then suggested it was to deter Tehran from ever developing a nuclear weapon.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has absurdly framed it as a mission to “protect Americans” by taking out Iran’s ballistic missile systems. In the meantime, the violence has begun to ripple across the broader Middle East as Iran responds with drones and strikes targeting U.S. allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Azerbaijan.
