Donald Trump sensationally told McDonald’s executives what he doesn’t like about the chain’s food during a rambling speech in which he also made an unexplained, quite otherworldly noise.
The president began his address on Monday by acknowledging that his prepared remarks often don’t match what he ends up saying—and then provided several examples of these tangents. And while he often veers off script, blurting out seemingly random noises is a new one.
“No matter who you are, everybody loves something at McDonald’s. There’s always something to have,” the 79-year-old said at one point, before resorting to onomatopoeic sound effects to support his point.
“I like the fish. Khhhhh. I like it,” the president, famously a fan of the chain’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich, declared, making a jerky motion with his hand as he spluttered out the mystery noise.
He then took a jab, albeit perhaps tongue-in-cheek, at the restaurant. “You could do a little bit more tartar sauce, though, please. Seriously,” he said, pointing to the front row executives and asking, “Do you understand that? Yes, he understands.”
Over the next 45 minutes, Trump continued to speak in a raspy voice about various topics that had little to do with the fast food chain.
Addressing McDonald’s franchise owners, operators, and suppliers who had gathered in Washington, D.C., Trump said he wouldn’t care if CEO Chris Kempczinski, 57, threw out a signed copy of his speech he had just given him.
“You can either hang it, you can give it to somebody, or throw it away, I don’t care,” he said. “But I don’t stay on the speech too long, anyway. Actually those speeches aren’t too accurate to what I give.”
He then declared that he was “one of your all-time most loyal customers.”
At one point, Trump was at least self-aware while hyping up his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, which he compared to his push for real sugar over corn syrup.
“I said you’ve got to go to sugar, just like I said, ‘Why is the Gulf of Mexico called the Gulf of Mexico?’ I said, ‘We’re changing the name.’ And now it’s the Gulf of America,” he said, even though his Jan. 20 executive order only applies to agencies in the executive branch.
“Has nothing to do with McDonald’s, but maybe it does,” Trump then said while pointing his index finger at his temple and making a circular motion with it. “Because we have 92 percent of the shoreline... Wasn’t that a good change? Seriously, wasn’t that beautiful? And it was done in an instant. Normally you think a thing like that would take years. This took, like, 10 minutes.”
Later, after he told McDonald’s franchise owners they would have to “fight” minimum wage increases, Trump bragged about his airstrikes on Iran back in June. This part didn’t appear to be in his prepared address, either.
“The equipment is so good. The B2 Bomber. Stealth. They never saw them,” Trump said after reenacting watching the strikes from the Situation Room, adding sound effects in the process. “It was the most amazing thing.”
Towards the end of his speech, the president rehashed his gripes with having water restrictions on appliances like shower heads, sinks, and dishwashers. But in the process, Trump couldn’t resist repeating the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him.
“You had no water. I was with some of the people who make them, Whirlpool and others. They said, ‘Sir, they won’t give us the water to use in our dishwashers or to use in our washing machines. The washing machines have no water. It’s like a glass of water, a half a glass of water. We need water,’” Trump said.
“I said ‘How bad is it?’ He said [for] the dishwasher, they put the dishes in and they just keep pressing the button. They end up using more water. So I gave them, as you know, unlimited water,” he claimed.
“Biden came back with a rigged election and he immediately restricted the water again. I came back in and immediately unrestricted it again, so now you have unlimited water to clean your damn dishes, OK? And other things. Your hands.”
