Former President Donald Trump closed out a National Republican Senatorial Committee's (NRSC) donor retreat in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday with a private speech that focused on his false claims of election fraud, took credit for reviving the GOP's "dying party," slammed Republican senators who had criticized him, and relitigated other grievance he has been nursing since losing the 2020 election, if not earlier, The Washington Post reports, citing a recording of the speech it obtained.
Trump extensively praised Chinese President Xi Jinping and touted his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but called his two impeachments and the investigations into his ties with Russia "all phony sh-t," the Post reports. And then, "unprompted, he brought up an unsubstantiated claim he had interactions with prostitutes in Moscow before he ran for president," the Post adds, quoting Trump: "I'm not into golden showers. ... You know the great thing, our great first lady — 'That one,' she said, 'I don't believe that one.'"
Trump also returned to his windmill fixation, criticizing President Biden's new plan to pepper the U.S. coastline with offshore wind farms and claiming — falsely — that windmills emit carbon emissions. "More goes into the air than if you ran something for 30 years," he said.
Still, it was Trump's continued insistence on making upcoming elections about him and his false complaints about the 2020 election that has GOP strategists worried, the Post reports. Trump's threats that he will urge Republicans not to vote if the party doesn't "solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020," as he said Wednesday, gives "everyone cold sweats," one top party strategist told the Post, pointing to the GOP's 2021 Georgia Senate losses. At the same time, the NRSC and its House counterpart use Trump liberally in their fundraising efforts — like, say, at this week's donor retreat.
It's "one thing for NRSC to send out fundraising emails using Trump's name," New York Times political reporter Jonathan Martin tweeted. "But inviting him to a fundraiser where he discusses golden showers is really maximizing the humiliation."