Trump mocked for new video responding to Biden taunts over his gaffes: ‘So easily triggered!’
Donald Trump is being mocked for hitting out at President Biden after he suggested he forgot the name of his wife, Melania Trump.
During an appearance on NBC‘s Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday, Mr Biden, 81, who has repeatedly faced concerns over his age and cognitive ability, turned the tables on his opponent, who he claimed “can’t remember his wife’s name”.
The president was referring to an appearance by Mr Trump at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he appeared to refer to his wife Melania as “Mercedes”.
“Well look, my wife, our great first lady, she was great... people love her,” Mr Trump told the CPAC crowd on Saturday. The audience applauded, to which he responded, “Oh, look at that, wow. Mercedes, that’s pretty good!”
The comments were highlighted by some of Mr Trump’s opponents as evidence of his “cognitive decline”.
Mr Trump hit out at these accusations in a video posted to his Truth Social account on Wednesday, where he accused Democrats of being “really dishonest,” adding: “They make up things constantly.”
“The radical left Democrats are at it again. They’re constantly making up stories about me, because their candidate is a mental and physical basket case. There has never been anything like it,” he said.
He then called President Biden “the worst president in the history of our country,” before saying Mr Biden “went on a very poorly rated show last night, and he talked about Donald Trump and his wife, [alleging that] I don’t know the name of my wife.
“He was referring to the fact that at CPAC,” he added. “We had a sold out speech – the biggest audience they’ve had in years, I think, maybe ever. I made the statement that Melania was very popular because, when I mentioned her name, the audience went wild. I then looked at the two people – man and wife Matt and Mercedes Schlapp. Then I said, ‘Wow, they really like the first lady.’ So this got taken as the fact that I thought Mercedes was the first lady. It has nothing to do with that.”
Mercedes Schlapp is Mr Trump’s former White House director of strategic communications and the wife of CPAC organiser Matt Schlapp.
Ms Schlapp quickly responded on Sunday to claims that Mr Trump had mistaken her for his wife, calling it “fake news at its finest“
Elsewhere in the video, Mr Trump highlighted other gaffes he has been accused of, including suggesting that former president Barack Obama is currently in office, which he said he did “purposely for comedic reasons and for sarcasm, because a lot of people say that Obama is running the country, not Biden, because he’s sleeping all the time”.
Mr Trump also said he had been accused of having trouble getting off the stage. He claimed this was actually him imitating President Biden, who earlier this month was characterised as “an elderly man with a poor memory” in a report by special counsel Robert Hur.
“What they do is they say, ‘Oh, he had trouble getting off the stage’. I have no trouble getting off the stage. Anybody that watches what I do at rallies would say, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. He can go two hours without a teleprompter and not make even a little mistake.’ Very few people – maybe almost nobody – can do what I do,” Mr Trump said.
“The disinformation of the Democrats is unbelievable,” he added, concluding that Mr Biden “should not be leading this country. And hopefully on November 5th, he’s not going to be. We’re gonna have a big election. We’re gonna have a big victory. And we’re gonna make America great again.”
Mr Trump was mocked for the video on X, with Pod Save America co-host and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau saying the former president “is so easily triggered by Biden mocking his verbal diarrhea”.
Trump is so easily triggered by Biden mocking his verbal diarrhea https://t.co/GpTAJViKSG
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) February 29, 2024
Anti-Trump super PAC, The Lincoln Project, branded the video “the ramblings of a madman”.
Meanwhile, another X user called the video “deranged.”
“Everyone has a right to be stupid. But Trump is abusing that privilege,” they added.
Mr Trump, who is the GOP frontrunner, has been accused of several gaffes recently, including appearing to confuse Nikki Haley with former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
This has led to critics accusing the one-time real estate mogul of being too old to run for president and rumors about his cognitive decline.
But the 77-year-old has insisted he has “aced” cognitive tests on more than one occasion and that he feels “sharper now than I did 20 years ago”.
He has also been highly critical of the 81-year-old Mr Biden, who he claims “can’t put two sentences together and he’s in charge of nuclear warfare”.
Mr Trump also trolled Mr Biden last month with a spoof advert depicting the White House as a “senior living” establishment where “residents feel like presidents”.