Donald Trump and Kamala Harris at a presidential debate on September 10, 2024, in Philadelphia.<\/span>Alex Brandon\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A version of the below article first\u00a0appeared<\/a>\u00a0in David Corn\u2019s newsletter,\u00a0<\/em>Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month\u2014but you can\u00a0sign up for a free 30-day trial<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Last month, when<\/span> MAGA luminaries Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Joe Kent turned on Trump over his impulsive war against Iran and his threat to destroy its \u201cwhole civilization,\u201d Trump decried this gang as \u201clow IQ.\u201d That was an unusual move for him\u2014in that three of the four are white.<\/p>\n As has been observed by others, Trump often hurls the \u201clow IQ\u201d insult at Black people. For some, that\u2019s a sign he\u2019s a racist. There certainly are others: His family real estate business was sued in the 1970s by the Justice Department for racial discrimination; he exploited the racially charged case of the Central Park Five in 1989, when five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger; he peddled the racist and fraudulent birther conspiracy about Barack Obama; people who worked with him on\u00a0The Apprentice<\/em>\u00a0say he used racial slurs, including the n-word; he referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as \u201cshithole countries\u201d; he called on Democratic congresswomen of color to \u201cgo back\u201d to their home countries; he characterized Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists; during a 2020 campaign debate, he refused to condemn white supremacists; he has appointed people with racist records and ties to white nationalists; he shared a video on social media that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s his vicious assault on DEI and wokeness\u2014and his hiring practices. As of the 300-day mark of his current term,\u00a091 percent of his confirmed appointees were white<\/a>. For Biden that figure was 61 percent. (About 60 percent of the current US population is white.) Photos like this one<\/a> of Trump\u2019s US attorneys tell the story:<\/p>\n Look, there\u2019s one brown guy! And only a handful of gals.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s not tough to make the case that Trump is a racist. And it\u2019s easy to cite his frequent use of \u201clow IQ\u201d to denigrate Black people as another data point showing he\u2019s a bigot. But might Trump just be a jerk who calls a lot of his critics and foes \u201clow IQ\u201d?<\/p>\n I asked the director of a research shop\u2014which would prefer to not be named\u2014to crunch the numbers on this. These bean counters looked at both Trump\u2019s social media posts and his public statements. The findings are no surprise.<\/p>\n Since April 10, Trump has zapped out nine Truth Social posts deploying the \u201clow IQ\u201d tag. Six times his missive referred to a Black person.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n This team examined his Truth Social posts for the past four years, ending on April 10. In that stretch, Trump called individuals and communities \u201clow IQ\u201d at least 50 times, and 60 percent of these instances involved Black public figures and legislators. These targets included Vice President Kamala Harris; Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.); the Rev. Al Sharpton; New York Attorney General Letitia James; and political strategist Donna Brazile. The white people he excoriated in this fashion included Joe Biden, Tim Walz, Liz Cheney, and Robert De Niro.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since April 10, Trump has zapped out nine Truth Social posts deploying the \u201clow IQ\u201d tag. Six times his missive referred to a Black person\u2014House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, or Owens. Once the target was Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.); another time, Carlson. And there was that post that railed against his MAGA antagonists: Kelly, Kent, Carlson, and Owens.<\/p>\n The tilt is clear. Trump reaches for this characterization more often when he\u2019s denouncing Black people. Notice, though, that it\u2019s just not Black people but Black\u00a0women<\/em>\u00a0who draw much of Trump\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n That pattern holds when the data set expands beyond his Truth Social rants. Those researchers also scrutinized a collection of Trump\u2019s public statements for the past 10 years, searching through a repository of C-SPAN videos that covered Trump speaking at rallies, press briefings, and other events. They found he deployed the \u201clow IQ\u201d aspersion at least 75 times. Forty of these instances\u201453 percent\u2014targeted Black people. He also used it to describe Somali and Hispanic immigrants.<\/p>\n Trump has often derided Obama\u2019s intelligence and suggested he was accepted at Columbia University and Harvard Law School only due to his race. The idea that the first Black president was a smart fellow seems to be too tough for Trump to accept.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Harris clocked in with the most mentions (23). Biden was next (17). Then came Waters (8), Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (5), and Crockett (3). Trump claimed Harris was too \u201clow IQ\u201d to be president. In October, he said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was \u201clow IQ\u201d and could not pass a cognitive test.<\/p>\n Last week, speaking at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida full of Trumpers, he also declared that Barack Obama could not pass a cognitive test. In the past, he has often derided Obama\u2019s intelligence and suggested he was accepted at Columbia University and Harvard Law School only due to his race. The idea that the first Black president was a smart fellow seems to be too tough for Trump to accept.<\/p>\n If you want to get technical\u2014and give Trump the benefit of the doubt\u2014you could argue that since Democrats (and Democratic politicians) are disproportionately Black compared to the overall population, Trump\u2019s political enemies will more likely be Black than an average sampling of Americans. Consequently, more targets of his \u201clow IQ\u201d slur will be Black. But it does seem that Trump often picks nasty fights with Black opponents\u2014and relishes doing so. And there are plenty of ways to assail a political foe without calling him or her an idiot.<\/p>\n Trump has long displayed an obsession with IQ. He believes people are either born with intelligence or they\u2019re not, and he has asserted that immigrants have brought \u201cbad genes\u201d into the country. He has frequently boasted his IQ is sky-high, attributing that to his \u201cgood genes\u201d and pointing to his uncle, John Trump, who was a highly accomplished MIT professor. He has never made public any IQ test he\u2019s taken, though he regularly brags about passing cognitive tests that screen for dementia. (Lion, rhinoceros, camel!) For him, \u201clow IQ\u201d is one of the most stinging insults he can sling. It\u2019s hard not to attach significance to the fact that he so often hurls this barb at Black people.<\/p>\n To make the case that Trump is a racist, it\u2019s not necessary to rely on his use of this epithet. But it\u2019s an obvious piece of evidence. One would have to be not the sharpest tool in the shed to not see the connection.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-06-at-8.15.15-AM-2.png\")
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