Donald Trump, 79, set aside talk of the holiday season on Sunday during a White House Christmas reception to ramble about snakes—and his daughter, Ivanka.

In a not-so-shocking twist, the president veered off script while addressing the crowd, ricocheting through a laundry list of topics before landing on an unusual fixation: snakes.

“[Peru] is known to be a rather rough place in terms of physical creatures crawling around,” a visibly sweaty Trump began. “28,000 people die a year from a snake bite, a certain snake. It’s a viper. It’s said to be the most poisonous snake in the world.”

In fact, the most venomous snake in the world is the inland taipan, which is native to Australia. A 2020 study evaluating snakebites in the Americas found that about 2,150 occurred annually in Peru, resultin

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