At a Pennsylvania rally on Tuesday, President Donald Trump claimed out of nowhere that an affair between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok ― the FBI “lovers” the president once mimicked having orgasms ― ended with a restraining order. He made the claim to raucous jeers from the crowd, and then admitted over and over that he had no evidence the restraining order actually existed.
“Lisa Page, so in love she didn’t know what the hell was happening, texted the head of counterintelligence Peter Strzok ― likewise, so in love he couldn’t see straight. This poor guy,” Trump said to the crowd in Hershey. “Did I hear he needed a restraining order after this whole thing? To keep him away from Lisa? That’s what I heard.”
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The crowd reacted by booing Strzok and Page. Trump admitted time and again he didn’t know if the restraining order claim was true. No matter: He just kept saying it.
READ: Trump’s ‘fake orgasm’ is what got former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to break her silence
“I don’t know if it’s true. The fake news will never report it,” the president said. “But it could be true. No, that’s what I heard, I don’t know. I mean, who could believe a thing like that? No, I heard that Peter Strzok needed a restraining order to keep him away from his once-lover. Ah, Lisa, I hope you miss him. Lisa, he’ll never be the same.”
Trump’s performance in Hershey came not long after Page broke her silence about what it’s like to be targeted by the president, who has repeatedly attacked her and Strzok for texts they exchanged in 2016 that were critical of then-candidate Trump. The president even went so far as to mimic Page and Strzok having sex during a previous rally, which, Page said, inspired her to finally speak out.
MORE: The wild story of the FBI lovers who used agency phones to go off on Trump is now a play
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she told the Daily Beast earlier this month. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that an unnamed “source familiar with Page’s thinking” said Trump’s allegation about the restraining order is “absolutely untrue.”
Trump and his Republican allies have regularly attacked Page and Strzok, saying texts about an “insurance policy” show the investigation into Trump was a sham to remove him from office. The former FBI employees have a completely different explanation for the messages, saying the “insurance policy” was an analogy for the idea that even if Trump was probably going to lose the 2016 election, they still had to do their jobs on the investigation.
Page is suing the Justice Department and the FBI for disclosing those texts to the media, saying it was done, at least in part, to improve the DOJ’s standing with the president.
Cover: President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019, in Hershey, Pa. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
