Donald Trump has once again scored an own goal in his attempt to mock President Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities. This time, he invented a term for the selectively edited videos that conservatives have used to suggest that Biden is a weak human being.
During a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday, the former president mentioned viral clips of Biden that have flooded right-wing media and Trump’s social media feed in recent weeks. The videos, which allegedly show the president “freezing” or rambling, have been called “cheap fakes” by the White House. Independent fact-checkers, meanwhile, have shown that the clips fall apart under the slightest scrutiny once additional context or other angles are taken into account.
Trump had initially mocked his 81-year-old Democratic opponent for “humiliating our country on the world stage,” referring to a clip of Biden speaking to a skydiver who landed near a gathering of G7 leaders this month.
“He’s actually humiliating us. You saw what happened this weekend. He’s making the United States a joke around the world,” the ex-president explained. “First he left the G7 summit in Europe on that stage. He looked like he didn’t know where the hell he was, but he didn’t know where he was. Now he’s blaming AI. He says – he doesn’t know what AI is, but that’s OK.”
Then, for the second time in the past week, the 78-year-old former president completely botched his point when he began to denounce Biden’s mental abilities.
“But Crooked Joe and his superiors insist he’s smarter than ever, and they say the videos of Crooked Joe shuffling around are pure fabrications,” he continued. “You know what pure fabrications are? They’re misleadingly edited. They say they’re misleadingly edited. All the mistakes he’s made. Every day. He can’t go anywhere without making a mistake.”
Just three days ago, Trump accused Biden of a series of age-related blunders and boasted about the results of his own cognitive tests – only to misname the doctor who administered the test.
“Doc Ronny! Doc Ronny Johnson! Does everybody know Ronny Johnson?” Trump shouted, calling out former White House physician Ronny Jackson, now a Republican congressman and MAGA supporter.
The ex-president went on to rant about how the mainstream media wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt even if he were “perfect,” yet they constantly cover for the current occupant of the White House. Then he once again botched the term “cheap fakes,” which refers to cheaply manipulated or doctored videos.
“And I’m not saying they’re outright fakes, although they are,” Trump grumbled. “They are. They are. That’s the fake news!”
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