Former President Donald Trump made a cheeky joke about dropping former first lady Melania from his rally in Georgia on Saturday after calling up to the stage an activist who earlier in the event had made comments taking direct aim at Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump mentioned Michaelah Montgomery toward the end of his remarks at his rally at Georgia State University’s Convocation Center in Atlanta.
He explained that he met Montgomery at a restaurant while he was in Atlanta earlier this year. Trump claimed that when he walked into the restaurant, which was a Chick-fil-A, she was “behind the counter” and told him, “President Trump, you saved my university.”
“This woman is very smart, very sharp. She grabbed me and gave me a kiss,” Trump said as Montgomery stood by. “I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever go home to the first lady.'”
“You were supposed to keep that quiet,” Montgomery joked in response after making a shushing gesture as the crowd laughed.
“For the average politician, that’s death. I don’t care,” Trump said.
Donald Trump brings Michaelah Montgomery on stage during his rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024
Montgomery is a Georgia activist who first crossed paths with Trump inside a Chick-fil-A when he made a campaign stop there earlier this year in April.
Trump’s version of the story was slightly flawed because she wasn’t behind the counter, but their meeting went viral after she asked Trump for a photo.
“She loved her college and she said, ‘You saved my college,'” Trump recalled Saturday before turning the floor over to Montgomery to say where she went to school.
Montgomery graduated in 2020 from Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college or HBCU. She went on to found Conserve The Culture, a grassroots campaigning organization.
While president, Trump signed a bipartisan bill that strengthened HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions.
Trump has been promoting such funds during his campaign, appealing to black voters.
Trump with Michaelah Montgomery (left) at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta on April 10
Trump kisses activist Michaelah Montgomery after bringing her on stage at his Atlanta rally
Trump praised Montgomery as “incredible” and said she has a “tremendous future.”
Before Trump brought Montgomery onstage toward the end of his remarks, she spoke at the rally earlier in the evening, where she attacked Harris and defended Trump’s recent false claims about the vice president’s racial identity.
Last Wednesday, Trump said in an interview that Harris, who is biracial, with an Indian mother and Jamaican father, “turned black” in recent years. He and his campaign have since doubled down on their line of attack.
“I’m trying to understand what all the outrage is about, because she’s only black when it comes time to be elected,” Montgomery said at Saturday’s rally.
“The same black people who are angry at Trump for being confused about their race, ethnicity, nationality, whatever, are apparently forgetting that while they are promoting her as a savior for black people, she identifies as an Asian woman,” Montgomery continued. “She chose her side, and it wasn’t ours.”
Harris is the first Black and South Asian vice president of the United States and identifies as Black and Indian. She attended the historically Black Howard University, where she was a member of the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha.
Harris responded to Trump’s attacks on her racial identity last week with comments indicating she would not debate her black identity with a white man.
“It was the same old show,” Harris said. “Division and disrespect, and let me tell you, the American people deserve better.”
