ABC News(FLINT, Mich.) — The pastor in Flint, Michigan, who interrupted Donald Trump during a Wednesday campaign event was a “nervous mess,” the Republican presidential nominee said Thursday.
Trump, speaking at a Flint church, had started to mention Hillary Clinton when the Rev. Faith Green Timmons cut him off to say, “Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for what we’ve done in Flint, not give a political speech.”
Trump acquiesced, and promptly continued with his remarks.
“She was so nervous,” Trump said Thursday morning on Fox and Friends. “She was a nervous mess, and so I figured something — I figured something was up, really,”
The interruption didn’t bother him, he said, adding that “everyone plays their games.” He also emphasized how pleased he was with what he described as support he received from the audience.
The church pastor was not as enthusiastic.
“When he asked to come in to make a statement and the statement went beyond what was originally said, I asked him to stick to what was originally said,” Timmons said after the Wednesday event.
Trump had told a crowd in Ohio Wednesday, “I’m willing to campaign anywhere. I’m willing to go anywhere, visit anywhere, even if some voters openly oppose me in a community, I think that’s fine, that’s their prerogative. I will listen and I will represent them if and when we win.”
Pastor Timmons had posted on Facebook the day of Trump’s visit, according to Fox and Friends, that, “Today is our day. We have our chance to show Donald Trump that this nation is filled with intelligent, wise, black citizens of integrity, many of whom will live here in Flint, Michigan. What he will see is how we are braving a man-made catastrophe [contaminated drinking water]. He will not use us. We will educate him.”
The post seems to have been deleted from what appears to be the pastor’s Facebook page. In her remarks after the event, Timmons said, “I wanted him to see the best of Flint. Some of the statements he has made about Africans, Mexican-Americans are degrading.”
“I wanted him to see intelligent people, loving people, caring people, who have done well with the resources that they had and I wanted to present the best I could to someone coming in from out of town, it happened to be Donald Trump.”
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