Trump ignores day of disaster in rambling West Virginia speech featuring turkeys, exploding windmills and imaginary Chinese drivers

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In a rambling and at times bizarre speech to supporters, Donald Trump ignored the unfolding legal disasters surrounding two former associates, instead focusing on a range of topics including turkeys, exploding windmills and imaginary Chinese car drivers.

The US president’s day of disaster began on Tuesday when his former presidential campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was found guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud by a jury in Virginia following a three-week trial.

Within minutes, in New York, Mr Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of his own, including campaign finance violations ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Mr Cohen said he arranged payments “for [the] principal purpose of influencing the election” at the direction of a “candidate” for federal office. He was working at the time for Mr Trump, who is alleged to have attempted to buy the silence of two women he is accused of having extramarital relationships with.

On Tuesday evening, Mr Trump did everything but address the legal peril he now appears to be in as he spoke in front of an almost exclusively white crowd in Charleston, West Virginia.

The president began his speech by taking a swipe at NFL players, who he accused of failing to “honour and cherish” the US flag when kneeling to protest police violence against African-Americans.

Crediting steel tariffs slapped on a number of countries, Mr Trump falsely claimed US Steel was opening “seven different plants” in the country. That would be news to US Steel, which has pointed only to the reopening of two blast furnaces in Illinois.

Mr Trump, the world’s most prominent climate change denier, also praised “indestructible” coal, contrasting it favourably to renewable energy sources.

“In times of war, in times of conflict, you can blow up those windmills, they fall down real quick. You can blow up those pipelines they go like this,” he said, pulling his arms apart to suggest an explosion. “You’re not going to fix them too fast.

“You can do a lot of things to those solar panels but you know what you can’t hurt? Coal, you can do whatever you want to coal.”

As has become usual at Trump rallies, the crowd booed any mention of the media and met the first reference to Hillary Clinton with chants of “Lock her up!”.

In a riff on immigration, Mr Trump claimed Democrats want to turn America into “one big fat sanctuary city” and suggested the proposed wall on the southern border with Mexico was “coming along”, despite having received no funding yet.

Midway through the rally, he announced a plan to slap a 25 per cent tax on every car that comes into the US from the European Union, claiming it would create a US trade surplus of more than £100bn.

Mr Trump also revealed he threatened to leave Nato unless other members upped their military spending, repeating his false claim the US pays close to 90 per cent of the alliance’s costs.

Addressing trade deals, Mr Trump insisted negotiating them “took time”, and compared it to “cooking a chicken”.

He said: “Time, time… Turkey for thanksgiving. My mother would say, ‘Ohhh eight hours’, I said, ‘Eight hours?’. She made the greatest turkey I ever had. Takes time, takes time.”

The president next launched into a bizarre story about Chinese drivers, in an attempt to highlight his anger at the country’s 25 per cent tariffs on US cars.

“A man was driving down a street in China, and he looked over, and it was a Chevrolet, like Camaro? Does that make sense? Is it a Camaro?” he asked the crowd.

“I think it cost $39,000 or $40,000. He’s in China, he’s in Beijing, and he shouts across, they’re stopped, he then shouts across, ‘Tell me, how much did that car cost in China?’ Guy looks, ‘$119,000’. Now you understand that right? It’s all taxes and taxes and taxes.”

After railing against the Paris climate agreement (and touting the US as the “cleanest country on the planet”), revealing he wanted to name his tax cuts bill the “Tax Cut Cut Cut Cut bill”, and telling supporters they would have to live with “fake news”, he wrapped up his speech with a rambling segment on people he described as “elites”.

“We’re the elite. You’re smarter than they are, you have more money than they are, you have better jobs than they do, you’re the elite,” he told his audience. “So let them have the word ‘elite’, you’re the super elite, that’s what it is. I always hate when they say ‘Well the elite decided to not to go to something I’m doing’. Right the elite?

“I say, ‘Well, I have a lot more money than they do, I have a much better education than they have, I’m smarter than they are, I have many much more beautiful homes than they do, I have a better apartment at the top of Fifth Avenue’. Why the hell are they the elite, tell me? Because you’re the elite, just remember that.”