Donald Trump on Monday confused former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush with either his brother, former President George W. Bush, or father, former President George H.W. Bush.
During a campaign stop in South Carolina, Trump reminisced about defeating Jeb Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
“When I came here, everyone thought Bush was going to win,” he said. “They thought Bush because Bush supposedly was a military person. Great. You know what he was a mili- … he got us into the, uh, he got us into the Middle East. How did that work out, right?”
Trump, who once boasted of having the “world’s greatest memory,” forgot that Jeb Bush never served as president, was not a “military person” and was not involved in conflicts in the Middle East.
Trump is correct in that Bush was considered the favorite for the Republican nomination in 2015, with an early lead in the polls and a $100 million war chest. But his campaign flatlined, early and he was out of the race in February 2016.
Trump recently challenged his rivals ― including President Joe Biden ― to a “mental acuity test” of his choosing while bragging that he “aced” such a test of his own.
In reality, he took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, in 2020. It’s not a mental acuity test but instead is used to check for signs of the cognitive impairments that could be an early sign of dementia.
Meanwhile, his own campaign events are increasingly loaded with gaffes, such as one earlier this month in which he claimed he beat Barack Obama in 2016, warned of a pending “World War II” and insisted that Americans need ID to buy a loaf of bread.
Given that history, critics were quick to fire back at Trump on X, formerly known as Twitter: