Trump: Viral Video Showed Tlaib is ‘Vicious, Like a Crazed Lunatic’

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
July 23, 2019Politics
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Trump: Viral Video Showed Tlaib is ‘Vicious, Like a Crazed Lunatic’
President Donald Trump speaks at Turning Point USA's Teen Student Action Summit 2019 in Washington on July 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump targeted Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on July 23, noting a recently resurfaced video that shows Tlaib shouting during one of then-candidate Trump’s speeches.

While security officers begin escorting out, Tlaib jumps and shouts at the people attending the speech.

At one point, she shouts: “You guys are crazy!”

The video was recorded during a speech Trump gave at the Cobo Center in Detroit on Aug. 8, 2016.

She was one of 14 protesters who were ejected from the campaign speech, reported MLive. At the end of the speech, which lasted nearly 60 minutes, attendees gave Trump a standing ovation.

Trump said on Tuesday that he’d seen the video as it circulated recently.

“I watched just this morning this Tlaib,” he said, prompting boos. “There’s no way she stands for the values of the people of Michigan … She’s vicious, she’s like a crazed lunatic. She’s screaming like a total lunatic at one of our rallies,” he said of the lawmaker. “This is not a sane person, folks, when you look at that, and this is what we’re up against.”

“The Democrats, I guess, are forced to embrace her, and I call it AOC plus three,” he added, prompting applause.

Trump was referring to Reps. Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), known as the “Squad.”

The president was speaking at a Turning Point USA event.

Tlaib has vowed to impeach Trump. Hours after being sworn in earlier this year, she told supporters: “We’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the mother [expletive].”

In a speech at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention in Detroit on July 22, Tlaib said: “I’m not going nowhere, not until I impeach this president.”

Trump in the speech that Democrats want open borders, which leads to crime, drugs, and human trafficking.

“Women, mostly women, are being trafficked,” Trump said. “It’s never been like this before.”

“We can’t get the Democrats to give us even a modicum of money that we need at the border, especially for the wall,” he added.

Tlaib pointed supporters this week to an op-ed she published in the Detroit Free Press in 2016 after she disrupted Trump’s speech.

rep. rashida tlaib
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) testifies at a House hearing in front of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, in Washington on July 12, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

“The titles that ran through my mind were: American, parent, Muslim, Arab-American, and woman. As I thought about my identities, I felt more and more that confronting Trump was the most patriotic and courageous act I could pursue,” she wrote at the time.

“I have heard critics calling it unbecoming of a former state legislator. Well, I believe it is unbecoming of any American to not stand up to Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric and tactics.”

Tlaib said she was scared to do what she did but found the strength to stand up and begin shouting.

“I told Trump that ‘our children deserve better’ and I asked him to provide a better example to our kids. I implored him to read the U.S. Constitution,” she wrote. “And then I was grabbed by several security personnel who physically moved me to the exit while I continued to express my concerns.”