CAMPAIGN/RALLY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “I have to make the commencement speech at West Point… You have to understand I left early in the morning to get there. Now it’s sort of late in the afternoon… I’m wearing leather bottom shoes which is good if you’re walking on flat surfaces. It’s not good for ramps and if I fall down, look at all those press back there, look at them… This was a steel ramp. It had no handrail, it was like an ice skating rink, and I said, ‘General, I have a problem,’ and he didn’t understand that at first. I said, ‘There’s no way.’ He understood, I just saluted almost 600 times. I just made a big speech. I sat for other speeches. I’m being baked. I’m being baked like a cake. I said, ‘General, there’s no way I can make it down that ramp without falling on my ass, General. I have no railing.’
Now he’s standing there, big strong guy, and he’s got these shoes but they’re loaded with rubber on the bottom because I looked, the first thing I did, I looked at his shoes. Then I looked at mine. Very, very slippery… So what happens is I start the journey, inch by inch, right? I was really bent over too. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like this picture… [W]hen I was 10 feet short, I said, ‘General, I’m sorry,’ and I ran down the rest, right? I looked very handsome. That was the only good.”
-Donald Trump as quoted by Rev, “Donald Trump Tulsa, Oklahoma Rally Speech Transcript,” rev.com, June 21, 2020