Not even members of Donald Trump’s inner circle are safe from his ridicule.
The president, 79, offered a candid glimpse into what drives many of his closest relationships while speaking at an investor forum in Miami on Friday night: an apparent inferiority complex.
“You got a lot of losers, losers,” Trump mused while fielding questions about good qualities in leadership.
“Fortunately, it’s a good thing to have a lot of losers. I always like to hang around with losers, actually, because it makes me feel better,” he added.
“I hate guys that are very, very successful and you have to listen to their success stories,” he continued. “I like people that like to listen to my success.”
It’s not clear whom Trump was referring to, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification. Still, his Mar-a-Lago estate is often filled with loyalists eager to curry favor with the president. His relationships have also been well documented—perhaps none more so than his years-long association with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Epstein once described himself as the president’s “closest friend” before he died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
Other close pals of Trump have included Roy Cohn, Trump’s personal fixer and lawyer—also known as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s sinister sidekick and a ruthless prosecutor. Cohn is credited with shaping the president’s never-admit-fault approach. He was also a closeted gay man who bashed homosexuals, and ultimately died from aids in 1986.
These days, Trump counts Charles Kushner among those in his orbit—a convicted felon and father-in-law to Ivanka Trump, who serves as U.S. ambassador to France. Also in the mix is Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer who has known Trump for more than four decades.
Trump made several other attention-grabbing remarks during his address Friday at the Future Investment Initiative, which is run by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
While discussing the war involving Iran, Trump insisted that Iranian leaders have to reopen the “Strait of Trump,” before correcting himself to the Strait of Hormuz—then appearing to walk it back.
“The Fake News will say, ‘He accidentally said.’ No, there’s no accidents with me,” Trump said.
He later opened the floor for questions, declaring: “You can ask me anything you want. You can talk sex.”
Trump’s keynote address on Friday focused largely on the ongoing war in the Middle East which he launched in coordination with Israel on February 28. During his remarks, he declared Iran was “on the run” from the United States.
But a mere hours later, the Associated Press reported that at least 10 U.S. servicemembers were injured at a military base in Saudi Arabia, with two in serious condition.
