Trump gets ripped as he misquotes Shakespeare at rally, claims his crowds are bigger than Churchill’s

INDIANA, PENNSYLVANIA: Donald Trump was at one of his signature rallies in Pennsylvania when he started quoting Shakespeare and simultaneously tried to one-up Sir Winston Churchill.

The former president got people talking for all the wrong reasons on Monday, September 23. The 45th POTUS not only reignited his long-running obsession with crowd sizes but also attempted to quote William Shakespeare — emphasis on attempted — and it didn’t exactly go as planned. Let’s just say the Bard wouldn’t be impressed.

Donald Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes and the Shakespeare slip-up

It’s no secret that Donald Trump loves bragging about his crowd sizes. He took it a step further during this rally by comparing his crowds to those of former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Trump kicked off the comparison by praising Churchill as “this great speaker,” but then claimed: “I get much bigger crowds than him but nobody ever says I’m a great speaker.”

Now, this isn’t the first time Trump’s boasted about drawing larger crowds than historical figures. Last week, he made headlines for saying he attracts bigger audiences than Elvis Presley. And let’s not forget August when he claimed his crowds were even bigger than those at Martin Luther King Jr’s legendary March on Washington.

As if comparing his crowds to Churchill and Elvis wasn’t enough, Trump then tried to take a literary detour by quoting Shakespeare - or so he thought. While roasting President Joe Biden, Trump wanted to drive home the point that Biden “never was smart, he wasn’t smart 40 years ago."

So, naturally, he reached for what he believed was a line from the Bard: “Did you ever hear Shakespeare? He was ‘hail and hearty and well met,’ but he wasn’t a smart person.”

First of all, that’s not a Shakespeare quote. Trump was actually trying to reference the idiom “hail-fellow-well-met,” which describes someone as friendly but maybe not entirely sincere. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s an old phrase, but not something Shakespeare ever penned.

Regardless, Trump mocked Biden for his own slip-ups, mentioning how the sitting president mixed up Ohio and Iowa back in March 2020. Then, of course, he turned his attention to Vice President Kamala Harris. “But she is a very dumb person and we can’t do that," he said, as quoted by The Independent.

Donald Trump trolled on social media for his comments

However, social media blew up after Donald Trump’s comments at the rally. Critics mocked his botched Shakespeare quote and his obsession with crowd sizes.

"I hope he keeps talking. Every time he does, more people realize what a buffoon he is," one user posted on X.

"A total ignorant quoting Shakespeare, what a laugh," another quipped.

"I assure you Trump has never read one word of Shakespeare," someone else insisted.

“'Friends, Russians, mistresses, lend me your ears,' Trump added,” read a comment — a twist on a famous line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

"Trump is a moron. Sub-literate. CLASSLESS. He doesn't even have table manners," another fumed.

Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania wasn’t just about entertaining his base; it had real stakes. Pennsylvania is a crucial battleground state that Trump won in 2016 but lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

Both parties are eyeing the state as a must-win for the upcoming election, and Trump knows it. A recent Washington Post poll showed Trump and Harris neck-to-neck in the state, with Harris planning to campaign in Pittsburgh just days after Trump’s rally.

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