President Donald Trump joked about Secret Service agents wearing blackface during a private speech to Republican National Committee donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Axios reports.
Axios said a person attending the speech described the apparent joke. There was no recording of it because security guards made attendees put their cellphones in magnetized pouches until they left the club in order to prevent leaks.
The guest said that Trump went off on a "bizarre tangent" during the Friday night speech, describing being alone in the White House over Christmas during the government shutdown when he opened his curtain to look at Secret Service agents swarming the lawn, saying "They're in the trees, on the lawn."
Trump then said he saw agents wearing night vision goggles. "They're in blackface," the president added, so maybe "they have to take them away," he said according to two sources who were at the event.
The sources assumed the president was referring to the recent controversy in which it was revealed that Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam appeared in a racist costume that included blackface in his 1984 medical school yearbook.
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