Donald Trump to Stop Telling Jokes on the Campaign Trail: 'I Don’t Think I Want to Be a Comedian'

Former President Donald Trump told the audience of a recent town hall that now is not the time for him to be a "comedian."

"I don't really want to smile," he explained during a South Carolina event. "I want to smile when we complete the task and make America great again."

Fox News shared the unaired clip from the town hall on Wednesday evening, in which Laura Ingraham highlighted Trump's comedic skills and asked how he might incorporate humor into his campaign.

Ingraham expressed, "You’re extremely funny. I mean, you have a fantastic sense of humor." She also pointed out that some people may not see this side of him due to the serious challenges he faces during the election campaign.

Trump began repeating himself, saying, "We have a country that’s dying. We have a country that’s a failing nation. I say it in my speeches, it’s a failing nation. We have a nation in decline. We are a nation in decline."

"I just don’t think it’s a subject that we’re smiling too much about," the ex-president explained. "When I see 18 million – by the time he leaves, I think that’s going to be the number – 18 million people coming in from places unknown, we have no idea who they are, but they are terrorists. We’re going to have massive terrorism. We’re going to have a big problem with terrorists. We’re gonna have a lot of problems."

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Trump then pointed to a group of people off-camera, telling his audience, "You have a great family right there, the Heinz family sitting in the front row. They lost their daughter to an illegal alien that came in, and we threw him out and he was gone, and he came back in, just came back in, and their daughter was killed by an illegal immigrant that came in during the Biden administration. So sad."

"So I just don’t see that much humor in what we’re doing," he continued. "This is a very serious charge, and this is a very serious thing I’m doing, and I don’t want to be — you know, if I start talking with a smile, they’ll say, 'He smiled,' because the fake news is just terrible. 'He smiled, what was he smiling about?'"

The clip ended with him saying, "I don’t really want to smile. I want to smile when we complete the task and make America great again."