Donald Trump's mega chargesheet: 15 times ex-President was racist, sexist, and just plain weird

Donald Trump has a long history of speaking his mind, from shockingly racist and misogynist rhetoric to the just plain unhinged, his comments never fail to draw attention.

Over the years, Trump has famously used , now called X, to air his opinions, drawing scorn, delight and disbelief from millions of social media users and often making the news with his outlandish pronouncements.

Despite Trump’s claims he is “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered,” his record, both on and off the campaign trail, tells a different story.

Here we have gathered the worst and weirdest of what he has said in the past, in no particular order, as the stares down the barrel of another four years of President Trump.

Claimed immigrants were eating pets

During ABC's presidential debate, Trump said: "In Springfield, they are eating the . The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there."

City officials in Springfield confirmed there were “no credible reports” that this ever happened but schools in the city were subject to a wave of bomb threats following the remarks.

Questioned Kamala Harris’ ethnicity

Trump questioned Kamala Harris' racial identity during a bizarre exchange at a convention for Black journalists. "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black," he said. "So I don't know - Is she Indian? Or is she Black?"

Ms Harris is the first Black and Asian-American vice-president, with Indian and Jamaican-born parents.

STOP THE COUNT

Two days after polls closed in the 2020 US Election, Trump tweeted "STOP THE COUNT!" sparking a wave of legal challenges and conspiracy theories that the election had been “stolen” from Republicans.

Unwilling to accept the outcome of the election in key swing states, Trump refused to admit defeat and stoked rumours that ballots had been “shredded” in a phone call to Georgia’s Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger trump said: “I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

Trump was subsequently charged by the State of George, along with 18 co-defendants, who prosecutors say, "knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome" of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Georgia. The case is currently stalled in the Georgia courts and looks unlikely to proceed given Trump’s upcoming second term as president.

January 6

On January 6 2021, days after his infamous Georgia phone call, Trump addressed a meeting of his supporters in Washington DC, he urged his followers to converge on the Capitol Building home of the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Thousands of Trump supporters would later storm the barricades around the building in an attempt to get inside and disrupt the process of making Joe Biden’s victory official. Six deaths were linked to the event, one Trump supporter was shot by security, one police officer died after he was beaten by rioters, three died of natural causes and one person died of a drug overdose.

Trump was impeached and charged with attempting to overturn the election; another court case which now looks unlikely to proceed given his recent election win.

President Obama ‘birther’ conspiracy

For years Trump led the “birther” movement, which cast doubt on whether president Barack Obama was really born in the USA and fuelled a raft of conspiracy theories. Even years after Obama released his birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii, “birtherism” carried on, claiming he had been born in Kenya.

In 2011 the White House released Obama’s long-form birth certificate but that didn’t stop Trump tweeting multiple times

An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012

and claiming it was fake.

Calling Covid the 'China virus'

During the Covid pandemic Trump was accused of stoking xenophobia and fuelling a surge of harassment towards Asian Americans after he called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the “ virus” and “kung flu” at a rally in June 2020.

Stop AAPI Hate, an organisation that tracked hostile anti-Asian incidents, said it saw a surge in reports after Trump began using the term “China virus”.

Disinfectant injection

In April 2020, during the Covid19 pandemic when terrified populations were watching business as usual collapse all around them, then-president Trump sparked an outcry in the medical community after he suggested coronavirus could be treated by injecting bleach.

At a press conference Trump said: “I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” Forcing media outlets to publish warnings that injecting disinfectant is potentially fatal.

“For me, it was the craziest and most surreal moment I had ever witnessed in a presidential press conference,” said ABC’s chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl.

Calling African nations 's***hole' countries

According to a leak from an aide, Trump referred to African nations as “s***hole countries” in a discussion in the Oval Office with senators about migration.

According to the aide, when the group came to discussing immigration from Africa, Trump asked why America would want immigrants from "all these s***hole countries", and that the US should have more people coming in from places like Norway.

The comments came moments after Trump also made disparaging comments about Haiti in the same conversion, sources told the Washington Post at the time. “Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” he said, according to sources. Someone else in the room responded: “Because if you do, it will be obvious why.”

Calling Mexican migrants 'rapists'

In June 2015, while Trump was a presidential candidate, he said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best."

He added: "They're sending people that have a lot of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

The Muslim ban

Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. His administration eventually implemented a ban on certain groups of people from six majority-Muslim countries coming into the USA..

The bans, which included people from Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen, were revoked by when he became president. At a campaign rally for the 2024 election Trump said he would bar the entry of refugees from Gaza fleeing ’s retaliatory strikes after the October 7 attack.

Stormy Daniels

, 45, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is a Louisiana-born adult film star who testified in court about how she first met Trump at a charity tournament in 2006 days after his wife Melania had given birth. After accepting a dinner invite, Ms Daniels described turning up at his hotel suite and to be greeted by the former president wearing only silk pyjamas.

In excruciatingly detailed court testimony, she described how they then had sex and how Trump’s then-lawyer Mr Cohen paid her $130,000 in "hush-money" to keep her quiet about the affair, just ahead of the 2016 election.

Trump was found guilty of criminal fraud in a trial related the payments to Ms Daniels in May, with his sentencing delayed until after the election, another criminal case against him which looks unlikely to see Trump punished as he prepares to become President for a second time.

Sex abuse case

In June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll alleged in New York magazine that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996. On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll, but found him not liable for rape. They awarded Carroll $5million in damages. Trump was ordered to pay Carroll an additional $83.3million in damages in January 2024 after he Trump was found to have defamed her again.

'Grab 'em by the p****'

In one of Trump’s most notorious slurs, he was recorded discussing groping women with US TV personality Billy Bush. “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump can be heard saying on the tape.

“Whatever you want,” Bush replies. Trump continues: “Grab ’em by the p****. You can do anything.”

Calling women 'slobs' and 'unattractive'

Trump has a history of unpleasant comments about women, both his political rivals and those he dislikes for other reasons. During his feud with comedian Rosie O’Donnell he said: “Rosie O'Donnell is disgusting — both inside and out. If you take a look at her, she's a slob. How does she even get on television? If I were running The View, I'd fire Rosie. I'd look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers and say, ‘Rosie, you're fired’.”

During another Twitter spat with singer Bette Midler Trump tweeted: “While @BetteMidler is an extremely unattractive woman, I refuse to say that because I always insist on being politically correct.”

Of during her he said: “Does she have a good body? No. … Does she have a fat ass? Absolutely.”

Another of Trump’s bizarre Twitter obsessions was the relationship between Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, insisting the couple should break up in a string of tweets criticising her looks. He wrote: “Robert I'm getting a lot of heat for saying you should dump Kristen — but I'm right. If you saw the Miss Universe girls you would reconsider.”

In a comment to a Rolling Stone reporter about Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina's appearance on TV he said: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”

Weird social media posts

Trump's history on Twitter, as well as being littered with racist and sexist comments, is also a bizarre museum of and unhinged tweets and takes. As well as his famous “covfefe” tweet other bizarre messages include the claim he was a “very stable genius,” in a tweet from 2018. He said: " ... I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!"

He also used the platform to make a series of wild claims before his presidential bid in 2016. In November 2012 he posted: “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”

In 2012 he also said on the platform: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

In an inexplicable and now-deleted tweet, posted on September 11 2013, Trump wrote: “ I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.”

In another inscrutable message from 2012 he famously Tweeted: “The Coca Cola company is not happy with me--that's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.”