Donald Trump on Monday confused former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush with either his brother, former President George W. Bush, or his father, former President George HW Bush.
During a campaign stop in South Carolina, Trump recalled his victory over Jeb Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
“When I came here, everyone thought Bush would win,” he said. “They thought of Bush because Bush was supposedly a military man. Great. Do you know what kind of military man he was… he took us to the, uh, he took us to the Middle East. How did that work out, right?”
Trump, who once boasted of the “the greatest memory in the world“I forgot that Jeb Bush was never president, was not a “military man,” and was not involved in conflicts in the Middle East.
Trump is right in that Bush was the favorite for the Republican nomination in 2015, with one early lead in the polls and a $100 million war chest. But his campaign failed early on and he dropped out of the race in February 2016.
Trump recently challenged his rivals – including President Joe Biden – to a “mental ability test” of his choosing and boasted that he himself “passed with flying colors” such a test.
In fact, he took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in 2020. This is not a test of mental performance, but rather signs of cognitive impairment, which could be an early sign of dementia.
Meanwhile, his own campaign rallies are always full of gaffes, such as one earlier this month in which he claimed he had beaten Barack Obama in 2016. warned He warned of an impending “World War II” and insisted that Americans need ID to buy a loaf of bread.
Given this history, critics were quick to respond to Trump on X, formerly known as Twitter: