One of the footnotes of Donald Trump’s first press conference as president-elect was his offhand comment, possibly tied to claims in an unverified intel dossier, that he was a “germaphobe.”
“I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way — believe me,” he told reporters at the presser on Wednesday in what could’ve been an oblique reference to the widely circulated document published by BuzzFeed.
During an August 2015 conversation with The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief creative officer, Janice Min, he said the opposite.
“I’m not germophobic. I do it. I want to make the country great. I’m going to win. I think I have a very good chance of winning,” Trump said at the time. “You probably are starting to feel that too. I go through and shake hands and do what I have to do, and people like me, and I like them. In Iowa, I must have shaken 2,000 hands — and those were only the ones that were next to me.”
