Donald Trump, 79, set aside talk of the holiday season on Sunday during a White House Christmas reception to ramble about snakes—and his daughter, Ivanka.
In a not-so-shocking twist, the president veered off script while addressing the crowd, ricocheting through a laundry list of topics before landing on an unusual fixation: snakes.
“[Peru] is known to be a rather rough place in terms of physical creatures crawling around,” a visibly sweaty Trump began. “28,000 people die a year from a snake bite, a certain snake. It’s a viper. It’s said to be the most poisonous snake in the world.”
In fact, the most venomous snake in the world is the inland taipan, which is native to Australia. A 2020 study evaluating snakebites in the Americas found that about 2,150 occurred annually in Peru, resulting in roughly 10 deaths between 2000 and 2015.
Later, Trump paused midway through what he described as an “interesting” story and grinned at a woman in the crowd.
“Boy, you look like Ivanka,” he said, referring to his 44-year-old daughter. “Has anyone ever told you that? I’m looking and saying, ‘is thant Ivanka?’”
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Trump then took it a step further, asking the woman, “Can you just turn around for the camera?” He invited the crowd to weigh in on her resemblence themselves. “Doesn’t she look like Ivanka? It’s the most unbelievable thing,” he declared.
“You look just like Ivanka, which is a great compliment, actually,” he concluded.
Trump has a long history of making eyebrow-raising comments about his daughter. In 2003, he told The Howard Stern Show that Ivanka was one of the “great beauties of the world,” while also complimenting her body. In 2006, during an appearance with Ivanka on ABC’s The View, he again drew attention to her looks.
“I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her,” Trump said at the time.
“If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …” he added suggestively in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview, returning once again to the subject of dating his daughter.
Before leaving the podium on Sunday, Trump also falsely claimed that he won California in the 2024 election but that the race was “rigged,” and repeated his baseless assertion that he beat former President Joe Biden in 2020. He vowed that “truckloads” of evidence supporting those claims were forthcoming.
The president’s rambling remarks came a week after Zeteo reported that Trump was fuming over a growing wave of coverage scrutinizing signs of his apparent deteriorating health. Outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN have all followed the Daily Beast’s reporting on the issue.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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