What did Donald Trump do today?
He found still yet another Black person to call "low-IQ."
Trump, in another emotional social media rant claiming that the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court was somehow stacked against him, called Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson a "Low IQ Person."
Earlier this month, he used the same term for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives: "totally low IQ person."
Other people Trump has called a "low IQ person" include:
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
Rep. Al Green (D-TX)
Vice-President Kamala Harris
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
and Lenard Larry McKelvey, better known by his stage name Charlamagne Tha God
He's also used recently used the term to describe the tens of millions of ethnic Somalis in general, and especially Americans of Somali descent: "I always say these are low-IQ people."
Trump, who has repeatedly and in all seriousness boasted about passing dementia screening tests that involve identifying animals in pictures and counting backwards, believes that he is highly intelligent and that this is genetic. He often cites the fact that he is related to (though not descended from) his uncle John G. Trump, who was a legitimately accomplished electrical engineer, as proof of his own mental prowess.
That is closely linked to Trump's belief in the racist, discredited theory of eugenics. He got this from his father, Fred Trump Sr.—but not because of genetics. As Donald Trump himself has admitted, Fred—who was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927—taught him that intelligence was a simple, heritable trait like eye color.
Trump certainly isn't alone in clinging to these archaic racial theories about intelligence. Eugenics and even things like phrenology are trendy again on the far right, including among people like Elon Musk, who hold great sway over the Trump administration. He's not even the only U.S. president to espouse them. For example, they bear a strong similarity to views expressed by President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), although as a relative racial moderate during his presidency more than a century ago, Wilson generally didn't air them in public once he took office.
Why does this matter?
- Dressing gutter racism up in the language 150-year-old discredited science doesn't make it smart.
- Nobody who isn't completely insecure about their intelligence—however justified that insecurity may be—talks this much about how smart they are and how dumb everyone else is.