A garbage truck driver who Donald Trump said was a dead-ringer for Cary Grant spoke about his stunned response when he got the call to drive the former president for an emergency photo op.
‘I didn’t really believe it at first till I picked up the phone and talked to the guy myself,’ said Andrew Brisson, the VP of family trucking company LoadMaster based in Detroit.
That call set in motion an extraordinary series of events that had Trump turning the tables on a comedian’s ‘offensive’ garbage comment about Puerto Rico – and giving perhaps the first-ever presidential candidate press conference from inside a garbage truck.
Soon, Trump’s team of backers would slap red, white and blue Trump MAGA labels on the side of the gleaming truck, which Brisson selected from his fleet.
Andrew Brisson briefly drove Donald Trump for his photo-op where the former president slammed ‘garbage’ comments, and spoke about what it was like to be inside the cab
‘And then, I guess after a little conversation, he knew somebody that I knew within the industry down in the area. I went onto our lot, found a nice-looking garbage truck and hopped in it and started heading down to Green Bay,’ he told Fox news.
He said it was very ‘spur of the moment’ but he kind of had the idea he would be ‘driving Trump around.’
In an election with razor-thin margins, even small PR victories can make a difference, and Trump’s stunt allowed his team to change the subject from fury over a comedian’s comments about Puerto Rico at his Madison Square Garden rally.
Trump’s speech to a rally that day wearing a safety vest got beamed around the country. (The national uproar shifted Friday from garbage-gate to Trump’s dark comments about rival Liz Cheney facing nine rifles pointed at her face).
When the moment finally arrived, Trump briefly failed to grab the door handle of the vehicle and could have slipped, in a moment rivals used to mock him and question his health.
But he did make it inside, and ended up fielding questions from reporters.
But Trump wasn’t ready to call it a day.
Trump suffered a near-slip during a photo op where Trump got in a garbage truck in a safety vest and trashed Joe Biden over his ‘garbage’ comments
Trump spoke about the consequences of a fall, which he said would be a career-ender
‘Once they were all done, I started up the truck. I blew the air horn and then he looked over at me and said can you take me for a ride in this thing. Yeah, I can do that. And you know, l released the park brake, put it in drive and started moving forward,’ Brisson said. ‘I think, like Trump said, we only moved a foot or two and then the Secret Service kind of just started glaring at me and waving their hands and that was the end of the ride.’
Trump spoke at length about the moment at his campaign rally that night, where he also spoke about how difficult it was to get into the truck.
He compared Brisson to the late Hollywood actor Cary Grant. It was a comparison that was over the bearded Brisson’s head, he admitted. ‘No, I didn’t have a clue,’ he said.
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