7 Bizarre Moments From Trump’s Easter Monday You May Have Missed

Donald Trump gave several very strange updates about everything from Iran to Joe Biden throughout Easter Monday in typically rambling fashion.

Across one truly surreal day, the US president talked about bombing the Middle East while surrounding by jovial Easter decorations, shared a lot of detail about a secret mission and threatened to send a reporter to prison.

The president attracted plenty of attention after comparing UK prime minister Keir Starmer to Neville Chamberlain, who championed Hitler appeasement before World War 2, and claiming he could wipe out Iran in just one night.

But here’s a look at some of his more obscure moments which may have slipped under the radar…

While hosting a nonpartisan Easter event in the White House, Trump stood at a microphone and told gathered children about… the war he started on a different continent.

He said: “I don’t think it gets much more hostile than Iran. They’re capable fighters, they’re very tough people. There are others like that.

“You don’t mind when the enemy is weak but they enemy is strong.

“Not so strong as they were about a month ago, I can tell you, in fact I can tell you they’re not too strong at all, in my opinion, but we’re soon going to find out aren’t we?”

He was stood next to someone dressed in a large rabbit costume throughout this particular rant.

Despite beating the Democrats in the presidential election more than a year ago, Trump still used his White House event to bash his rivals.

He told the crowds gathered for the Easter Egg hunt: “Did anyone in the egg industry vote for Kamala? She’s a low IQ person.

“Who is a lower IQ person, Biden or Kamala?”

He later sat with children telling them about his repeated theory that Biden used an autopen to sign official documents.

During a later press conference where he was expected to give an update on Iran, Trump spent more than 15 minutes talking about how the US military rescued an American crew member from Iran after his aircraft was shot down.

He said the airman “scaled cliff faces, bleeding rather profusely, treated his own wounds, and contacted American forces to transmit his location”.

Trump also interrupted his own press conference to ask top officials “how many” rescuers were sent on the mission.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Caine, said: “Uhh, I’d love to keep that a secret.”

Trump said he would, then proceeded to divulge the information anyway: “It was hundreds… hundreds could have been killed.”

He added that the rescue mission involved 155 aircraft, four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refuelling tankers, 13 rescue aircraft and others, amid additional efforts to deceive the Iranians about where they were searching.

Then CIA director John Ratcliffe stood at the podium and said the US used unique capabilities which only the president can deploy – but refused to share further details.

“As an agency, the CIA possesses unique capabilities that only the president can deploy. Some of these capabilities fall under covert action authorities. And because covert means exactly that, I’m not going to be able to tell you everything that you want to know,” Ratcliffe said, moments after Trump’s oversharing.

The president also said his government was pursuing the “leaker” who told the media about the missing airman – and the press company who published the information.

“They basically said that ‘we have one and there’s somebody missing.’ Well, they didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information,” Trump said.

“So whoever it was, we think we’ll be able to find it out because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘national security, give it up or go to jail.’

“And we know who – and you know who – we’re talking about. Because some things you can’t do, because when they did that all of a sudden the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life.”

In a social media post over the weekend, the president threatened to bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure if the regime did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz by his set deadline (1am on Wednesday, UK time).

Doing so would widely be considered a war crime under international law.

But speaking at the White House, Trump said: “I’m not worried about it. You know what’s a war crime? Having a nuclear weapon.”

Trump said the defence alliance’s refusal to help him attack Iran is a “mark on Nato that will never disappear”.

He said he was “very disappointed” by the lack of support, after several countries refused to let him access their military bases or airspace – even though the UK has allowed the US to use their sites for defensive strikes.

European governments also refused to send their own warships to the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump alluded to his upcoming meeting with Nato chief Mark Rutte, saying: “They’re going to say, ’oh, we’ll do this. We’ll do that. Now they all of a sudden want to send things.”

He also revived his spat with European allies from the beginning of the year, saying: “It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said, ‘bye bye’.”

Trump somehow ended up alleging that the North Korean dictator had attacked the former US president.

Trump said: “We’ve got 45,000 soldiers in South Korea to protect us from Kim Jong Un, who I get along with very well. He said very nice things about me. He used to call Joe Biden a mentally r******* person.”

He added: “He was so nasty about Joe Biden he was terrible. But to me, he likes Trump.”

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