Donald Trump has joked that David Lynch’s career in Hollywood is “officially over” after the maverick film director suggested in a Guardian interview that Trump could go down as one of America’s greatest presidents.

Trump seized on the comment by the reclusive director of Blue Velvet, Eraserhead and Twin Peaks during a typically freewheeling, hour-long speech that ranged from North Korea and space rockets to facelifts and fake hair, yet made no mention of family separations at the southern border.

We need small acts of resistance against Trump and his lackeys | Suzanne Moore Read more

A Guardian article published on Saturday noted that Lynch, who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary, is undecided about Trump. “He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much,” he told the paper. “No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.”

The article added that Lynch thinks while Trump may not be doing a good job himself, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might. “Our so-called leaders can’t take the country forward, can’t get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this.”

The interview gained coverage in various media outlets including the rightwing Breitbart News, formerly headed by Steve Bannon, one-time chief strategist at the White House. Its summary glided past the caveats about Lynch’s views on Trump’s job performance. It was this version that caught the eye of the president, who tweeted a link to it on Monday.

Then, at a rally in support of South Carolina governor Henry McMaster ahead of a runoff election, Trump claimed that “plenty” of people in Hollywood voted for him. Standing at the podium, reading from a print out of the article in his left hand, he first mixed up the names, saying: “’David Lynch could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history.’”

The crowd cheered anyway. Trump added: “Of course, there goes his career, right, in Hollywood.”

He then repeated for good measure from the Breitbart article: “Veteran film maker David Lynch believes President Donald Trump could be remembered as one of the greatest presidents in American history because of the way he has shaken up the political establishment.” Trump added with his own flourish: “And because of what I’ve done.”

Trump then skipped a paragraph that referenced the Guardian, Sanders and Lynch’s support for support Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in the presidential election, continuing: “‘However, he now appears to believe because he was a Democrat or is a Democrat or something, he actually voted for Obama, ha ha, and here it says he voted for Bernie Sanders, OK? But he now says, however, ‘he now appears to believe that Trump may have been the right choice,’ after all.”

Reporting Trump’s First Year: The Fourth Estate – heroism in these dark days Read more

After a digression, Trump rounded off the anecdote by saying: “There’s David Lynch. Enjoy it because his career in Hollywood is officially over.”

From there he took aim at TV talk show host Jimmy Fallon, who recently repeated his regret for tussling Trump’s hair in a light-hearted segment during the 2016 election campaign. “The guy screws up my hair, it’s going back and forth, he was so disappointed to find out it was real, he couldn’t believe it.

“Well, that’s one of the great things I got. Everybody used to say my hair’s phony, it’s not my hair, I’m wearing a hairpiece. Anybody here wearing a hairpiece now? But the one thing, they never say that any more because I’ve been caught in rain storms, I’ve been caught in winds that are like 60 miles an hour getting off. If it’s not your hair, don’t run for office, folks, don’t run. Do not run for office because the gig would be up.”

Trump added: “Jimmy Fallon apologised for humanising me, the poor guy, because now he’s going to lose all of us.”

In apparent dig at another late night host, Stephen Colbert, who subjects the president to withering satire nightly, he continued: “The guy on CBS, what a lowlife. I mean honestly, are these people funny? They’re not talented people. I can laugh at myself, frankly if I couldn’t I’d be in big trouble. Johnny Carson was talented. This guy on CBS has no talent.”

In another bizarre interlude, Trump recalled rumours when his wife Melania disappeared from public view in mid-May for a benign kidney condition. “But they had all kinds of projections. They said she got a facelift. No. I would let you know. They couldn’t hide that one for long.”

Despite global outrage, the president made no mention of more than 2,300 children separated from their parents at the US-Mexican border or how they can be reunited. Instead he said of the high-octane immigration debate with Democrats: “That’s the one thing that I learned, OK? I saw it — but what we have is two extremes — and I liked it. I said, ‘Hey, this is fine for us’.”

The president was rapturously received by supporters, one of whom waved a handwritten “space force” placard, and many of whom booed and jeered the media. In a rare moment of melancholy, he said: “If I ever come into an arena and it’s got empty seats, I think that’s the end. I don’t know how I’ll be able to take it.”