Donald Trump has made a point in recent months of deriding his rival Joe Biden as cognitively impaired, mocking the 81-year-old US president for his verbal stumbles and accusing him of struggling both up and down stairs.
But people in greenhouses are not allowed to throw stones.
On Saturday evening, Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, returned to the theme 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 election to take a cognitive test, just as he had done while in the White House .
Related: Biden takes issue over age issue and wishes Trump a happy 78th birthday
Trump told his audience that he “passed” the cognitive test after advice from the then-presidential doctor, a Republican member of Congress he called Ronny Johnson. “Has anyone heard of Texas Congressman Ronny Johnson?” he asked the crowd.
“He was the White House doctor, and he said that, in his opinion, I was the healthiest president in history. That’s why I really liked him.”
The Ronny Johnson who administered Trump’s test was in fact Ronny Jackson, who represents Texas’ 13th Congressional District. Jackson has been one of Trump’s most loyal advocates since joining the U.S. House of Representatives in 2021.
Trump’s blunder on Saturday evening was immediately shared on social media. One of the most upbeat messages came from Biden’s 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 notably failed to do so, headlined three days of what the group billed as “training” for Republican forces ahead of the November election.
The event was held in downtown Detroit, a deliberately provocative choice of location 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 stream of racist and sexist comments, including his statement that Martin Luther King was a “terrible” person.
Trump’s visit to Detroit was significant, as Michigan is one of the few critical battleground 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 to portray himself as popular with black and Latino voters during recent campaign appearances, in the wake of a series of polls showing his support among those 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 addressing the Turning Point convention, Trump visited a black church in Detroit for an event billed as a “community round table.” His campaign team simultaneously announced the formation of what they called “Black Americans for Trump,” a coalition of African-American elected officials, religious leaders and celebrities who have endorsed him.
Kwame Kilpatrick, the Black former Democratic mayor of Detroit who was released from a 28-year prison sentence for public corruption crimes after Trump pardoned him in 2021, was among those who linked their names to the announcement. “I can never thank President Trump enough for what he did for me and my family by giving me freedom,” he said.
But Kilpatrick stopped short of supporting Trump for a return to the Oval Office. He added: “I believe this election and the issues surrounding it are personal to every family and every person in America.”
If Trump had hoped that a 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 heard speeches from a range of Trump figures, including his former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who was greeted in the room with 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 avoid any temptation to discredit Detroit, in line with his recent habit of expressing disdain for majority-minority Democratic cities. On Thursday, he sparked controversy with his comments about Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he will be nominated as the presidential candidate at next month’s Republican National Convention.
Trump reportedly called Milwaukee a “terrible city” to fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Although he spared Detroit, Trump on Saturday made similar derogatory comments about the nation’s capital, which is 53% Black and Latino. He called Washington DC a “nightmare of murder and crime” and warned visitors to the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial that “you will eventually be murdered, shot and beaten to a pulp.”
