What did President Trump say immediately before the 'smart people don't like me' clip and is a full recording available?
Executive summary
A widely circulated clip shows President Trump saying, "Smart people don't like me," before moving into remarks about a man in custody in connection with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk; the short viral edit began on social platforms and omits the sentence or sentences immediately preceding that line [1] [2]. Reporting indicates the viral cut originated from an Instagram post by Republican strategist Nicole Kiprilov at a Bedminster gala, but journalists who traced the clip found no publicly available full unedited recording that restores the precise lead‑in phrasing, and Kiprilov declined to elaborate on what — if anything — came before the quoted line [1] [3] [2].
1. What the viral clip actually contains
The clip that circulated on X and other platforms opens with President Trump saying, "Smart people don't like me," and the footage immediately cuts to laughter and then to Trump discussing the man in custody related to Charlie Kirk's assassination; multiple outlets transcribing the viral excerpt reproduce the line exactly as it appears in the shortened video [3] [4] [5] [2].
2. Why people asked about what came before the line
Observers flagged the clip because the viral edit lacks preceding context — viewers and fact‑checkers noted it was unclear whether Trump was quoting someone else, setting up a joke, or making a standalone claim about "smart people," and that ambiguity drove requests for the full recording to establish intent [1] [4].
3. Tracing the source: Kiprilov's Instagram and the PatriotTakes repost
Reporting traced the viral fragment back to a Sept. 14 post: the shortened clip was posted to X by the anti‑Trump account PatriotTakes and garnered millions of views, and the footage appears to have originated from an Instagram post by Nicole Kiprilov documenting a Sept. 13 gala at Trump’s Bedminster club, which is the chain of custody journalists used to confirm the clip's provenance [3] [2].
4. Is a full, unedited recording publicly available?
As of the reporting, no verified full, unedited video restoring the exact lead‑in sentence had been produced for public review; fact‑checkers and reporters reported the viral snippet and the Instagram source but did not locate — or were not given access to — a longer recording that shows what immediately preceded "Smart people don't like me" [1] [3] [2].
5. What witnesses and the source said about missing context
Nicole Kiprilov, whose Instagram appears to have provided the footage, told USA TODAY she did not precisely recall what Trump said before the clip and declined to answer further questions about the video on the record, leaving journalists without first‑hand clarification about whether the line was a continuation of a thought, a quote, or a setup for another remark [3] [2].
6. How reporting balanced interpretation and the limits of evidence
News organizations and fact‑checkers uniformly reported the verbatim content of the viral clip while also flagging the crucial missing context; they stopped short of asserting what Trump meant because the available public record — the brief viral cut and the traced Instagram post — does not contain the immediately preceding words and no source provided a definitive full recording for verification [1] [5].
7. Takeaway and open questions
The clear, verifiable facts are that Trump said the quoted line in the circulating clip and that the edit moves straight into remarks about the Kirk case; what cannot be affirmed from the examined reporting is the exact sentence or framing that immediately preceded "Smart people don't like me," because no authenticated full‑length video has been produced to the public and the person whose post yielded the clip declined to supply or recall that missing lead‑in [1] [3] [2].