President Donald Trump chuckled after an audience member briefly shouted over Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Charlotte, North Carolina on Monday.
The incident happened as Trump was spewing his conspiracy theory about the previous administration “spying” on his 2016 campaign.
“And that included President Obama–” Trump said before he was suddenly interrupted.
An audience member shouted during Trump’s rant. On Twitter, many accounts, including the Lincoln Project and VoteVets, initially interpreted the audience member as shouting “monkey,” referring to Obama. Others later clarified that it seemed the audience-member was shouting “SpyGate,” a reference to the false conspiracy theory that the Obama administration spied on Trump’s campaign.
Trump paused for a few seconds, then pointed and said “Let’s be nice.”
As the audience laughed, the President joined in with a chuckle of his own.
“This can only happen in North Carolina,” he said.
The Trump campaign later said on Twitter that the audience member shouted “SpyGate” and not the slur that others had initially heard.
This is false. He shouted "spygate." https://t.co/TMoiVSHbrA pic.twitter.com/JMY6fjusUg
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) August 24, 2020
Correction: This post initially reported that an audience member had shouted the word “monkey” during Trump’s comments on former President Obama. We have updated this post to note that it appears the audience-member said “SpyGate.” We regret the error.
