Donald Trump asks Pittsburgh crowd how Joe Paterno — who died in 2012 — is doing

Donald Trump in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

(Image credit: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

published 14 April 2016

People of Pittsburgh, forgive Donald Trump — he's so busy affixing his name to buildings, tweeting every thought that comes into his head, and painting things gold that he missed the news in 2012 that Joe Paterno died.

Trump is known to make off-the-cuff statements, and on Wednesday, his strategy backfired when he asked a crowd in Pittsburgh how Paterno, the former head coach of the Penn State football team, was doing. Reporters at the event say the crowd was confused and didn't know how to respond, largely due to the fact that Paterno famously died right after he was famously let go as a result of the infamous child abuse scandal that rocked the football program.

In addition to asking about the welfare of a dead man, Trump asked, "Are we going to bring that back? How about that whole deal?" so it's certainly possible that he did hear the news that Paterno was fired, but not that he died from lung cancer two months later. Who wants to break it to Trump that Breaking Bad is finished, the country has moved on from "Gangnam Style," and Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries are over?

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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