President Donald Trump told a rally crowd in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Oct. 28 that a man who heckled him about Jeffrey Epstein had been paid $250. Then he mocked the man with a remark about having a boyfriend.
“And now he goes home and his boyfriend gets upset with him,” Trump said after claiming the man had accepted $250 to disrupt the event.
The remark appears about seven minutes into the full speech archived by Roll Call Factba.se. Trump did not identify who supposedly paid the heckler or offer evidence for his claim.
Trump gave no basis for suggesting that the man had a boyfriend. The comment used a presumed same-sex relationship as a put-down.
The rally, at the Shoemaker Center on Ohio University’s Chillicothe campus, was for Sen. Jon Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor.
The ‘Epstein Plane’ Heckler at Trump’s Chillicothe Rally
The interruption came early in the speech.
“Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane!” a man shouted, The Daily Beast reported. The crowd booed and security took him out.
The Daily Beast identified him as Rob Potylo, a comedian and activist. Potylo, who goes by Robby Roadsteamer online, later posted his own video of being led out, Mediaite reported. He yells “Pumpkin spice pedo!” at the stage in it. “No political violence. We’re all buddies,” he says as officers walk him through the crowd.
Trump first said the man was “not a young guy.” Then he added: “They gave him $250.”
Two other protesters were also escorted out during the rally. “Such, such losers, boy,” Trump said. He described the man who’d mentioned Epstein as “very nondescript.”
Trump Repeats His Claim That He Threw Epstein Out of Mar-a-Lago
“So I threw Jeffrey Epstein out of the club like 20 years ago because I thought he was a whackjob,” Trump said, according to the Daily Beast. He called Epstein a Democrat and said he’d thrown him “the hell out of Mar-a-Lago.”
“They’re sick, weak people,” Trump said of those who bring up Epstein’s name.
A 2020 prosecutor’s email released by the Justice Department says flight records listed Trump on at least eight trips aboard Epstein’s plane between 1993 and 1996. The email did not accuse Trump of a crime. Trump has denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
Trump Made the Same $250 Claim About the Mississippi Ballroom Heckler
Two days earlier, at a Mississippi rally for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a heckler yelled at Trump about his White House ballroom. Trump said that man was a paid protester too. People like him get $250, he said, and “they think it’s Soros,” The Independent reported.
Andy Cohen joked about the ballroom line on X, then traded barbs with Trump supporters in his replies, his post shows.
In Ohio, Trump kept going on the money. “They get paid $250. They then get booked and they screw up their whole lives,” he said.
Then he went back to the story the heckler had cut off. It was about Husted’s body, a subject Trump has brought up at rallies all month, as Gayety reported last week.
“I started by looking at his ass, and it was strong as hell,” Trump said.
Later in the same stretch, he said, “I saved his ass.”
