5 weirdest moments from Donald Trump’s Arizona town hall

When the Donald Trump Show rolls into town, people start acting foolish — even during a heat wave advisory.

With temperatures reaching 113 degrees, at least 11 people were taken to the hospital Thursday while waiting outside a Trump campaign event at Dream City Church in Phoenix.

For his part, Trump came out of the gates blazing at the town hall, clearly loose while ranting in spiraling tangents about the southern border and immigration and claiming at one point that he was “leading now with Hispanic voters.”

He also pulled out two Tic Tac containers, one of them comically small, to explain inflation, which he said the U.S. would not have experienced if he won in 2020. It's a claim that doesn’t explain why all industrialized countries have experienced significant inflation since then.

Here are five of the weirdest moments from Trump’s appearance in Phoenix.

Comparing the crowd to D-Day soldiers

In a seamless transition, Trump went from talking about U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake to remembering “the immortal heroes of D-Day” who stormed the beaches of Normandy 80 years ago to the day.

“They’re the hearts, and they’re in our hearts of this country. They really are, they’re the heart of this country, these great people,” Trump said. “It’s really tremendous, we talk about great people. These are great people right before me, and I appreciate you being here, especially in these numbers. In these throngs.”

As president, Trump once refused to visit the graves of U.S. soldiers in France and called dead services members “suckers.”

Smooching Joe Arpaio

At one point, Trump suddenly broke into excitement and asked the crowd whether former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was in attendance before asking the 91-year-old to join him on stage.

Phoenix New Times named Arpaio as one of Arizona’s 12 worst politicians of all time. Arpaio is infamous for racially profiling the county’s Latino population and costing taxpayers more than $250 million for those court-ordered efforts to stop discriminatory policing.

Trump greeted Arpaio warmly with a strange, semi-European attempt to kiss Arpaio on the cheek.

“I don’t kiss men. But I kissed him,” Trump said.

Arpaio spoke briefly. Before scurrying back offstage, Arpaio pointed out that he and Trump share the same special day.

“You and I. Birthday. Same day,” Arpaio said.

After the former sheriff left, Trump said of Arpaio, “This guy did some job on the border.” Maricopa County is not on the border, and Arpaio did not have a hand in border policy.

Cheering for China

Trump told the audience about a discussion he had with Xi Jinping, the president of China.

“Strong guy. We got along well until COVID,” Trump said of Xi. In classic Trump one-man show fashion, he reminisced about asking Xi whether the Chinese government had drug problems and did an impression of Xi saying it did not because of “swift trial.”

“What swift trial is, they catch the drug dealer, and they give him a swift trial, meaning a very fast trial,” Trump said. “At the end of the trial, if he’s guilty, they execute him.”

The crowd cheered and clapped.

Insane asylums

One particular string of Trump remarks was enough to make any brain lose several cells.

“Under crooked Joe Biden, the world is emptying out their prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions. It’s emptying out all of these places at levels that nobody’s ever seen and sending us the most vicious criminals, savage gang members, sadistic cartels are pouring into our countries, loaded up with horrible, horrible criminals,” Trump said.

This isn’t a new claim from Trump. Fact-checkers have been unable to find any evidence to support it.

“They’re letting people come in from Asia. They’re letting people come in from all over the world. The Middle East. They’re coming in from Yemen. They’re coming in from all over,” Trump said. “They’re coming in from the prisons and the mental institutions. And can you imagine the money they’re saving?”

‘Domp,’ like ‘swamp’

We’ll present the full portion of the transcript for this one.

“I’m asking everyone to go out, and we have to swamp. You know the word, ‘swamp?’ I fired (FBI Director James) Comey, I fired a lot of people. I fired a lot of people. We were doing a job. But this is a different swamp. We have to go to swamp the vote USA dot com. Swamp the vote USA domp. … It’s a different version of the word ‘swamp.’ I never liked the word, ‘swamp.’ And then I said it one time at a big arena, and the place went wild, I said, ‘I sorta like it.’”

Trump then went on to talk about Frank Sinatra.