President Donald Trump sat down for a broad-ranging interview with News “Meet the Press on Sunday,” and in typical form he took some time to call out his enemies.
“[Democrats] have a new person named [Jasmine] Crockett,” Trump told NBC News’ Kristen Welker while speaking about the state of the Democratic party. “I watched her speak the other day, and she’s definitely a low-IQ person.”
As her profile among the Democrats rises, Crockett—who represents Texas in the House of Representatives and routinely opposes the president—has become a target of Trump.
On Sunday, Trump stated, “She’s a lowlife, and she’s a very low-IQ person,” echoing words he made about her back in March.
As she’s done in the past, Crockett responded directly to the president’s taunts, writing on X on Sunday: “For you to be in charge of the WHOLE country, you sure do have my name in your mouth a lot. Every time you say my name, you’re reminding the world that you’re terrified of smart, bold Black women telling the truth and holding you accountable. So keep talking…”
Long holding IQ as the be-all, end-all gauge of self-worth, Trump (He is equally fixated on “good genes,” and others’ generally immigrant “bad genes.” Usually, though, he is targeting Black women when he claims a critic is a “low-IQ person” or “individual.”
“I listened to President Trump call Rep. Jasmine Crockett a ‘low IQ individual’ and I realized I had heard that before, so put the question to ChatGPT,” NPR “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” host Peter Sagal wrote on Bluesky Sunday, alongside a screengrab of his results: ChatGPT pointed out that Trump had called Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) “an extraordinarily low IQ person” while repeatedly lobbing “low IQ” barbs at Vice President Kamala Harris.
Not the first to observe this behavior is Sagal. Trump has insulted the intelligence of male critics ― calling former Sen. Mitt Romney “one of the dumbest” candidates in the history of the GOP and the late Sen. John McCain a “dummy” ― but David Smith of the Guardian noted in 2018, he is just as likely to view them as a “pompous ass” or a “loser.”
Black public personalities he is criticizing usually get denigrated based just on their intelligence.
Trump disparaged Harris, his opponent, as “dumb,” “mentally unfit,” “slow,” “st Stupid,” and of course, “very low-IQ person,” throughout the presidential contest.
After the congressman was removed from the president’s speech to Congress and subsequently censused by the House, he also recommended in March Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), another “low- IQ individual,” be compelled to take an IQ test in Trump’s book. Black man.
Though they are nearly typically white like him, high- IQ people also fascinate Trump. Trump advisor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a “seriously high-IQ individual.” (So is Musk’s kid, X, according to Trump, though he’s just five.) Trump said in 2016 that his Cabinet, with just three persons of race in prominent roles, “by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled.”
Trump also enjoys highlighting his own IQ, referring to it as “one of the highest.” On several occasions the president has also described himself as a “very stable genius”.
Said Carrie Gillon, a linguist and cohost of “Vocal Fries, a podcast about linguistic discrimination,” the president’s speech style is clearly racist. Black people’s IQ is discussed in quite different ways than white people’s.
“It’s absolutely evident that he thinks Black people have lower IQs than white people — and believes IQ is an important and real way to measure intelligence, and that there is only one kind of intelligence,” Gillon told HuffPost.
“The history of IQ is racist and eugenicist, and would take a lot to unpack,” Gillon noted. “But ultimately: Talking about IQ, particularly in this way, is racist,” she said.
He believes that Black people can have so-called good genes when it comes to sports, but otherwise are ‘low-IQ individuals.’ It’s just blatant racism.
When IQ tests were developed in the 20th century, eugenicists and ethnocentrics seized onto them to argue that a person’s intelligence was determined by their genes. (Eugenics ― a pseudoscientific theory that’s undergoing a worrisome return ― is widely defined as the use of selective breeding to improve the human race.)
“They held up the apparent gaps these tests illuminated between ethnic minorities and whites or between low- and high-income groups,” Daphne Oluwaseun Martschenko, an assistant professor at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, wrote in The Conversation in 2017.
“In their darkest moments, IQ tests became a powerful way to exclude and control marginalised communities using empirical and scientific language,” Oluwaseun Martschenko wrote.
“Supporters of eugenic ideologies in the 1900s used IQ tests to identify ‘idiots,’ ‘imbeciles,’ and the ‘feebleminded,’” she explained. “These were people, eugenicists argued, who threatened to dilute the White Anglo-Saxon genetic stock of America.”
Critics of IQ tests today have contended that their “cultural specificity” renders the tests biassed toward the setting they were produced in, most usually white and Western society.
The accolades Trump does extend to well-known Black people intrigues Megan Figueroa, a linguist at the University of Arizona, and co-host of The Vocal Fries.
“I find it striking how it compares with how he talked about Deion Sanders’ ‘phenomenal genes,’” Figueroa said. “He believes that Black people can have so-called good genes when it comes to sports, but otherwise are ‘low-IQ individuals.’ It’s just blatant racism.”
Author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, Jennifer Mercieca notes Trump’s assault of Crockett as just another instance of his use of an ad hominem attack to evade criticism and responsibility.
“By using this rhetorical strategy ― one of his favorites ― he’s able to avoid the issue being debated or the criticism and rerouting our attention to the person who made the criticism, ” said Mercieca, a professor in the department of communication and journalism at Texas A&M University.
“Since Crockett is ‘a low IQ person,’ her criticisms of him don’t even require a response, they’re invalid and unimportant,” she said. “This allows Trump to insult his opposition without ever having to answer the question. It’s a strategy that works the same way whether there is a racial dynamic or not.”
Crockett has not shied away from interacting directly with the playground ad hominems for her part.
Crockett stated last month while on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” she would “absolutely,” take an IQ test “publically, head to head,” against the president.
The Texas congressman also occasionally gives the president a taste of his own medicine, which could help to explain why she has lately come under his notice so often.
Not sparing words during a House Oversight Committee hearing last September, Crockett referred to Trump as “simply minded” and “under-qualified.”
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