President Donald Trump has returned to the campaign circuit, determined to protect the Republican hold on Congress.
With the November midterms drawing near, polling data indicate Trump’s approval rests at a historic low, and the results suggest he is pulling down Republican contenders along with him.
Against this backdrop, Trump headed to Gastonia, North Carolina—just outside Charlotte—on Wednesday to rally in support of Senate hopeful Michael Whatley.
Whatley trails former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in a closely watched race that could tip the Senate balance.
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An Elon University poll in late August shows Cooper leading Whatley 49% to 38% among likely voters, WCNC reported.
Yet it remains unclear how much help Trump can offer Whatley, as he again strayed from the prepared remarks, turning the rally into a showcase for himself and boasting about his “high IQ.”
“It’s $1,776. I was quite impressed with my intelligence. I’m a high IQ person, after all,” he boasted.
Trump has repeatedly claimed to have “aced” three cognitive tests last year, apparently confusing them with IQ tests. Cognitive assessments are clinical tools used to diagnose declining mental conditions or impairment, not measures of general intelligence.
“No. I looked at the numbers … One dollar more and we’re $1,776. Everyone said it was impossible to get our military that number. I got that money,” he nonsensically crowed.
A conceited Trump bragging there about how he gave military personnel a $1,776 bonus late last year following a weeks-long government shutdown. The military wasn’t paid during the closure and many faced overdue bills.
But the president wasn’t finished with making wild claims. In fact, he used a term he coined for his opponents, but this time it backfired.
“Their policies are so dumb. All you do is take the ‘e’ you replace it with a ‘u’ and nobody knows there’s a ‘b.’ Nobody knows there’s a ‘b’ in dumb. They think it’s d-u-m,” he astonishingly claimed. Critics say most third graders know there’s a “b” in dumb.”
“I say it’s a one-letter change, but they’re Dumocrats,” he embarrassingly claimed as the muted crowd barely responded.
This isn’t the first time he devolved into a bizarre spelling lesson during a speech, essentially unraveling on camera.
In an address in May in New York, Trump suddenly became fixated on the spelling of the word “dumb” while explaining his newest nickname for Democrats, “Dumocrats.”
“D-U-M — not the B. ‘He’s a dumb person.’ It’s enough. Most people don’t know it has a B. He’s a dumb person,” Trump told the crowd.
The comment immediately triggered shock that he had just learned the spelling himself.
At the time, Trump’s archrival, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, fired back at him with a scathing comment.
“Idiot ends with a T, but most people don’t know that. (The ‘T’ stands for Trump),” Newsom posted on X.
Newsom responded again after Trump’s latest attempted insult with an even worse jab.
The governor posted another graphic on X — this time showing a meme of Trump with a blondish bowl haircut, sticking out his tongue with his fingers in his ear. The headline over the meme read, ‘DUMB AND DUMBER’ with the “B” in the second spelling inverted.
Social media quickly piled on.
“Unfortunately, stupid people never realize they’re stupid,” an X user pointed out.
Commenter Janelle Price agreed. “If you have to say you’re impressed with your intelligence… chances are you’re stupid! But you go ahead and try convincing the public and see where that gets you.”
Another X user agreed, “As bright as a sack of hammers. That has a b, tool.”
Naughty Kitty shouted, “HE’S SO MORONIC! I CAN BARELY STAND IT.”
Critics say “moronic” is a great word to describe Trump.
That “IQ” test he’s always boasting about? It’s the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), commonly used to flag early signs of dementia—not to measure intelligence. It includes tasks like drawing a clock or distinguishing a camel from a lion, not logic and reasoning skills typical of a real IQ test.
Despite repeatedly boasting that his IQ is “one of the highest,” Trump has never made his official scores public. His former attorney, Michael Cohen, testified in 2019 that Trump once ordered him to threaten legal action against his alma maters — including Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania — if they disclosed his grades or SAT scores.
