Kathrine Frich
He wants it to look just like him.
Living out of a suitcase for weeks on end wears down even the most energetic travelers.
When your job involves shouting into microphones across multiple time zones every single day, something eventually starts to give.
On Thursday, a tired voice in Washington sparked an unusual idea for beating travel fatigue.
A mechanical stand-in
President Donald Trump joked on Thursday that a mechanical stand-in might be the answer to his grueling midterm schedule, according to the Irish Star.
While welcoming first responders to the White House Rose Garden in front of reporters and officials, the 80-year-old president admitted the nonstop travel was testing his vocal cords.
“I just hope my voice holds out,” Trump told the crowd, as reported by the Irish Star. “If my voice holds out, we’re going to be in great shape,” he laughed, before adding: “You know, it is one voice, after all.”
Then came the pitch for a high-tech replacement. “I could maybe get one of those beautiful robots that they make nowadays and make them look just like me, and you wouldn’t know the difference,” Trump joked. “They make them pretty good. Send them out on the trail. I could sit home and watch them on television.”
Harsh words in Arizona
The Rose Garden event followed a packed Wednesday that saw the president hold back-to-back rallies in Montana and Arizona right after an event in Alaska, the Irish Star reported.
Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have spent most of October crisscrossing the country to boost Republican Senate and gubernatorial hopefuls against weak polling numbers ahead of the November elections.
During his stop in Arizona to back gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs, Trump’s mood turned much darker when the topic shifted to government whistleblowers, according to the Irish Star.
He told the crowd that anyone who leaks information deserves execution, recalling what he called the “old days” and saying that “in my opinion, leakers should be shot.” “They should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know,” Trump said.
He quickly turned his anger on the journalists covering the rally. Pointing directly at the press pen, Trump claimed reporters were “just as bad” as whistleblowers. “They look at me, those same people up there. They’re very, they’re almost as bad as a leaker because they leak,” he said. “No, they leak false information. That makes them a leaker, right?”
Online pushback grows
Claiming that reporters act “Oftentimes without a source,” Trump accused news outlets of inventing quotes out of thin air. “I think they make up a lot of the sources.
A source said that Donald Trump was extremely unhappy today. But then you find out there was no source,” the president told the Arizona crowd, according to the Irish Star. “They make it up. They’re like storytellers.”
Critics on social media quickly mocked the remarks, the Irish Star noted. “This coming from the man who sits there and tells stories for hours on end,” one user wrote online, while another asked: “Gosh, I wonder who spreads all the violent rhetoric in politics?” A third commenter claimed the president “knows it’s over” and decided to “go out in a blaze of glory.”
