President Donald Trump again attacked former President Barack Obama during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday, telling reporters that America’s Columbia University and Harvard Law educated first Black president “wasn’t a smart man.”
While touting his own cognitive abilities and claiming to have had a perfect score on a cognitive test that screens for Alzheimer’s disease, Trump called out Democratic figures that he deemed “not smart,” including Obama, former President Joe Biden, and California Governor Gavin Newsom.
“I would love to see anybody that’s a president or a vice president, or anybody that has any chance of being a president…I would like to see them take a cognitive test,” said 79-year-old Trump, whose health has repeatedly been called into question during his second term in office. “I don’t want a stupid person being president.”
President Trump claimed to be the only president to ever take a cognitive test, noting that he has done so three times and “aced it.” Trump’s White House physicians in both his first and second administrations confirmed the president has taken the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which is used by doctors to detect mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer’s disease. Both White House physicians, Drs. Ronny Jackson and Sean Barbabella, claimed Trump received a perfect score (30/30). However, it is possible to have dementia and still score above a 26.
Trump quickly turned his self-aggrandizement into scorn for Democrats. The president said Newsom, a rumored 2028 presidential candidate, is a “very stupid person” and “out of the running” for the White House because he has dyslexia. He also said former President Biden “had no clue what was happening.”
Speaking of Obama, whom he has mentioned repeatedly in recent weeks since the start of the U.S.’s deadly war in Iran, Trump said, “I’ll tell you about President Obama. He wasn’t a smart man either. I know all about him. He wasn’t a smart man, highly overrated. He was a great divider, and our country can’t go through that anymore.”
In response to Trump’s personal attacks on Obama and others, former Biden White House official Yemisi Egbewole told theGrio, “Ok well then, at this point, who does he think is smart? Just him? He’s called every political opponent or past president dumb.”
The former chief of staff for the Office of the White House Press Secretary added, “If he’s the smart one, then maybe he can figure out how to get gas prices down. Because I don’t remember them being this high under Obama.”
Trump has ramped up his insults of President Obama since the U.S. military launched strikes in Iran on Feb.28.
“Obama has not had a single achievement domestically or internationally that Donald Trump has not taken a swipe at, and part of that is because Obama’s appeal from the beginning of his administration, even before he got elected, remains very strong, even today, and Trump is watching his wane,” Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross previously told theGrio.
“He has been in a consistent, competitive race with Obama and Obama’s legacy since he got elected. The only thing that brought Donald Trump into the political sphere was this push to ensure that the legacy of the first Black president was going to be diminished.”
