The speech by Donald Trump at a party event in San Antonio, Texas, was interrupted by protesters at least six times, as shown in television broadcasts of the event. One protester was attacked while attempting to leave the venue, with the attacker being an older Trump supporter.
Trump described the protesters as mercenaries. "Many of these protesters are paid," he said. "These are paid protesters. They are paid by our nation's enemies." The interruptions caused the president to momentarily lose his composure as he repeated an untruth about James Talarico.
Trump claims that James Talarico, a Democratic representative from Texas, is a vegan who pretends to eat meat and vomits every time he eats it. There is no evidence for this claim, yet the president repeated it several times in recent weeks, following Talarico's defeat of the Republican candidate Ken Paxton. He began with a rare admission that he had mispronounced the word 'vegan' as 'vaygan'.
He spoke of the Democrat: 'He is a liar.' He added, 'He is a vegan. You know, my wife told me: 'Sir, do me a favour. You must do me a small favour. It is not 'vaygan', but 'vegan'.' As he told the story, it appeared he was confused about who exactly had corrected him. A few moments later, he said that a man had made the request. 'I didn't know. I didn't care. And he said: 'That is a vegan! Please, pronounce that word correctly.' I called it 'vaygan'. I thought – how would I know, for heaven's sake? I love steak,' Trump said.
At the event in San Antonio, Trump expressed anger towards Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Texas, who had not switched parties. He claimed that he had not made any deal with Cuellar before signing the pardon that ended the federal effort to imprison the representative and his wife over a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy. The president clearly indicated that he expected the representative to become a Republican out of gratitude.
'Many considered it a huge act of disloyalty, and it certainly showed him as a very ungrateful person,' Trump said. Calling on voters to defeat Cuellar by voting for his Republican challenger, he said: 'We will call it a repayment of debt to a disloyal, ungrateful person.' He added that Cuellar 'is a man considered low in Congress, not respected, and currently should be serving a long prison sentence with his wife'.
