Fact Check: Trump Told Rallygoers, 'I Don't Care About You, I Just Want Your Vote'?

Claim:

At a June 2024 rally in Las Vegas, former U.S. President Donald Trump said, "I don't care about you, I just want your vote. I don't care."

Rating:

Correct Attribution ( About this rating? )

Context:

Viral video clips of Trump typically omitted context that made it clear he was joking.

On June 9, 2024, a video clip of former U.S. President Donald Trump on the campaign trail went viral in which he reportedly told his audience, "I don't care about you, I just want your vote. I don't care." Dozens of posts on X containing the clip racked up millions of views collectively. "Freudian slip of the century," one X user commented.

The clip is authentic, meaning that it was not AI-generated or digitally altered. Trump made the remark at a Las Vegas campaign rally, where he spoke for about an hour. The clip only lasted 15 seconds. We were able to find complete footage of the rally on C-SPAN , and the quote in question begins at minute 49:03.

Many Trump supporters on X reacted angrily to the clip, claiming that it presented the quote out of context.

The missing context is that during the course of the speech, Trump commented several times on the excessively hot temperatures in Las Vegas on June 9 – which exceeded 100 F – at one point saying that the Secret Service had expressed concern for the crowd's safety. Trump joked about not wanting members of the crowd to leave, claiming he didn't care about them, only their vote. The crowd met this with laughter. The more complete quote is as follows:

And by the way, isn't that breeze nice? Do you feel the breeze? Cause I don't want anybody going on me, we need every voter. I don't care about you, I just want your vote. I don't care. See now the press will take that, they'll say he said a horrible thing.

We've published multiple fact checks on quotes attributed to Trump, including that he once said a candidate under federal investigation "has no right to be running," and that he published a farewell message in April 2024 saying he could be "thrown in jail."

Sources:

Campaign 2024: Former President Trump Holds Rally in Las Vegas | C-SPAN.Org . https://www.c-span.org/video/?536150-1/president-trump-holds-rally-las-vegas . Accessed 10 June 2024.