President Donald Trump couldn’t resist going off script during a gathering at the White House Friday night.
The president hosted members of Congress to show off the newly renovated Rose Garden, which he’s taken to calling the “Rose Garden Club.” It was a formal affair, complete with a prayer before dinner.
But moments after the prayer concluded, Trump launched into an unexpected anecdote about what he described as a major legislative victory — complete with late-night calls.
“So, getting back to why you got invited,” Trump stated. “So, I get a call from the speaker and he’d say, ‘Sir, we have 16 hard nos.’ It’s four o’clock in the morning, and we have one of many bills, because this happened many times. And it tended to be the same 16, 18, 19 people all the time. Four o’clock, five o’clock in the morning I call him. I said, ‘Jim, how you doing, Jim? Everything ok?’”
Trump then launched into a boastful explanation of how he strong-armed resistant lawmakers into supporting his bill.
“And he broke my ass and they had about 16 others. That doesn’t mean we don’t like them. But we had about 16, 17, or 18 others, and they made life very difficult. But we got them there because we had a period where we had a majority of one. Is that right, Mike? One. We were one heart attack away from losing the House. Think of that.”
Before the impromptu story time, Trump had addressed a crowd of roughly 100 people — mostly Republican lawmakers — thanking them for attending and framing the event as something more exclusive than your average political dinner.
“We call it the Rose Garden Club. And it’s a club for senators, for congresspeople and for people in Washington, and frankly, people that can bring peace and success to our country,” he said.