By admin 
It’s been more than 10 years since President Donald Trump quipped, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
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His base isn’t nearly so devoted to him these days. But he still returned to the theme this weekend during one of his many recent stops in deep-red territory where Republicans hope he’ll turn out the base for the November midterms.
“When you stand up here, it’s just like the love,” Trump said at a rally in Tennessee. “I could say the stupidest things, and you clap. ‘Oh, I love you so.’”
Both comments were couched as jokes, but both also pointed to a perception that Trump is happy to feed: that his base is almost cultishly devoted to him — as if they are unthinking automatons.
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A number of former Trump associates and advisers have said these kinds of comments betray a certain contempt that Trump has for his voters.
And over the years, he has assembled a lengthy volume of comments that could be understood to be similarly dismissive of the base voters who Republicans are pinning their midterm hopes on.
Let’s recap.
January 2016: ‘I could be the worst person in the world’
Before Trump’s “Fifth Avenue” comment, he tried out a different version.
“One of the things that came out in the one poll — nobody’s ever leaving me,” he said in New Hampshire in 2016, according to NBC News. “I could be the worst person in the world, they’re not leaving.”
Trump said that even if he did “some really inappropriate things, my people stay.”
January 2016: The ‘Fifth Avenue’ quote
“I have the most loyal people — did you ever see that?” Trump said in Sioux Center, Iowa, adding: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
He added: “It’s, like, incredible.”
February 2016: He could get away with ‘anything’
“Even the really dishonest press says Trump’s people are the most incredible,” he said in Sparks, Nevada, just before the state’s caucuses.
“I mean I had already 68% would not leave under any circumstances,” he added. “I think that means murder. I think it means anything.”
February 2016: ‘I love the poorly educated’
After winning the caucuses, Trump pointed to his superior polling numbers among voters with less formal education, which has been one of his most loyal demographics over the years.
But he rather provocatively called them the “poorly educated” — repeatedly.
“We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated,” Trump said, adding: “I love the poorly educated.”
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August 2016: Asking Black voters: ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’
In making an appeal to Black voters, Trump offered a pretty dismal review of their conditions.
“Look, what do you have to lose?” he said in Michigan. “You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
2020: Complaining about having to visit certain places
As CNN’s Kevin Liptak noted late in the 2020 campaign, Trump’s pitch to voters often included saying he wouldn’t have visited their locales if he didn’t have to. He often pointed to the freezing weather.
“Before the plague [Covid] came in, I had it made. I wasn’t coming to Erie,” Trump said in Pennsylvania. “I mean, I have to be honest: There’s no way I was coming.”
June 2024: ‘I don’t care about you; I just want your vote’
In another jokey comment, Trump told people assembled in stifling heat in Las Vegas that he needed them to live so they could deliver for him at the ballot box.
“Do you feel the breeze? ’Cause I don’t want anybody going on me,” Trump said. “We need every voter. I don’t care about you; I just want your vote. I don’t care.”
A joke, sure. The crowd laughed. But six rallygoers were hospitalized for heat-related illness.
July 2025: Calling Epstein-focused supporters ‘weaklings’
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote on social media about the push to release more documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”
Trump called these people “weaklings” who “do the Democrats work.”
(Left unsaid: The fact that many of those who had pushed this story before he returned to office were his own high-profile supporters. That included some who went on to serve in major roles, such as FBI Director Kash Patel.)
Saturday: ‘I could say the stupidest things, and you clap’
“When you stand up here, it’s just like the love,” Trump said in Tennessee. “I could say the stupidest things, and you clap. ‘Oh, I love you so.’ It’s true.”
After some laughter, the president assured that isn’t what he actually does.
“But we don’t say the stupidest things,” he said. “We say things of common sense.”
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