In recent months, Donald Trump has made a point of ridiculing his rival Joe Biden as having cognitive problems, mocking the 81-year-old US president for his verbal stumbles and accusing him of falling both when going up and down stairs.
But people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
On Saturday night, Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, returned to the topic during a speech in Detroit, Michigan, for the right-wing group Turning Point Action. He sarcastically joked that Biden “doesn’t even know what the word ‘inflation’ means” and challenged his rival in the 2024 elections to take a cognitive test just like he had done when he was in the White House.
Related: Biden Takes Offense Over Age Issue, Wishing Trump a Happy 78th Birthday
Trump told his audience he had “got it right” the cognitive test following the advice of the then-presidential doctor, a Republican member of Congress he named Ronny Johnson. “Has anyone ever heard of Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas?” he asked the crowd.
“He was the White House doctor and he said I was the healthiest president in history, according to him. So I really liked him.”
The Ronny Johnson who administered Trump’s test was actually Ronny Jackson, who represents Texas’ 13th congressional district. Jackson has been one of Trump’s most loyal supporters since he entered the US House in 2021.
Trump’s Saturday night gaffe was immediately shared on social media. One of the lightest posts came from Biden rapid response team.
Trump was speaking at the People’s Convention, a gathering of about 2,000 Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters organized by Turning Point Action. His 80-minute speech, in which he promised to answer audience questions but then failed to do so, headlined three days of what the group called “training” for Republican troops ahead of the November elections.
The event was held in downtown Detroit, a consciously provocative venue choice by Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk given that the city is 77% African American and overwhelmingly Democratic. Kirk has been widely criticized in recent months for a series of racist and sexist comments, including his statement that Martin Luther King He was a “horrible” person.
Trump’s visit to Detroit was significant given that Michigan is one of a handful of critical states likely to determine the outcome of this year’s presidential race. In 2020, Biden won the state by just over 150,000 votes.
The former president has tried, in recent campaign appearances, to present himself as popular among black and Latino voters, following a series of polls that show his support among these rising demographic groups. Last month, he organized a rally in the heart of the South Bronx, a heavily Hispanic and African-American community in New York City.
Before speaking at the Turning Point convention, Trump visited a black church in Detroit for an event billed as a “community roundtable.” His campaign team simultaneously announced the formation of what he called “Black Americans for Trump,” a coalition of African-American elected officials, religious leaders and celebrities who supported him.
Kwame Kilpatrick, the black Democratic former mayor of Detroit who was released from a 28-year prison sentence for public corruption crimes after Trump pardoned him in 2021, he was among those who lent their names to the advertisement. “I can never thank President Trump enough for what he did for me and my family, giving me freedom,” he said.
But Kilpatrick stopped short of endorsing Trump for a return to the Oval Office. He added: “I believe this election and the issues involved are personal for every family and every person in America.”
If Trump had hoped that a headline speech at the Turning Point convention would further improve his standing with black voters, he would have been disappointed. The crowd before him was almost exclusively white.
Attendees were able to hear speeches from several Trump luminaries, including his former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who was welcomed into the auditorium by chants of “USA, USA.” Supporters could also pose for selfies in front of a gold-plated Mercedes with Trump’s image on the hood.
In his Turning Point speech, Trump managed to resist any temptation to disparage Detroit, in line with his recent habit of dismissing majority-minority Democratic cities. On Thursday, he sparked controversy with his comments in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he will be nominated next month as a presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention.
Trump reportedly denounced Milwaukee as a “horrible city” to his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill.
While he spared Detroit, Trump made similarly derogatory comments Saturday about the nation’s capital, which is 53 percent black and Latino. He called Washington D.C. a “nightmare of murder and crime,” warning visitors to the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial that “you end up getting killed, you end up getting shot, you end up beaten to a pulp.”
