President Donald Trump recently leveled what’s become one of his go-to attacks against Democratic Reps. Jasmine Crockett (Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.): He called them “low IQ” people … again. And one American studies professor has since called out the president for “pitching racism and misogyny to his followers.”
While speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, the president inexplicably inserted Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez into his response to a question on whether he’d have the desire to serve a third term as president. Trump boasted about his popularity and said he’d “love to do it” — even though the Constitution sets a two-term limit for presidents.
Trump also said that Republicans nonetheless have strong contenders — he named Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as examples — to run for president in 2028, and that Democrats don’t have a “great group of people” fit to run for office.
“They have Jasmine Crockett, a low IQ person … AOC is low IQ, you give her an IQ test — have her pass the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center],” he said, before claiming that the exams were “aptitude tests in a certain way.”
“But they’re cognitive tests. Let AOC go against Trump. Let Jasmine go against Trump,” the president said, before adding: “The first couple of questions are easy — a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe … then when you get up to about 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.”
Trump didn’t clarify when he took the “cognitive tests” he was referring to on Monday, but the president has previously boasted about passing a test he was given at Walter Reed, which many believe is a reference to the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) — a screening tool used to detect cognitive decline.
Back in July, Trump similarly took a dig at Ocasio-Cortez’s and Crockett’s intelligence, calling them “low IQ,” before he told reporters that he “took a real test at Walter Reed Medical Center” and that he “aced it.”
Hello Mr. President!
Out of curiosity, did those doctors ask you to draw a clock by any chance? Was that part hard for you, too?
Asking for 340 million people. https://t.co/afaYP47knh
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 27, 2025
Both Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez have since responded to Trump’s most recent attack on Monday.
Ocasio-Cortez shot back at the president in a post on X, formerly Twitter, by mockingly asking him about the details of his test at Walter Reed: “Out of curiosity, did those doctors ask you to draw a clock by any chance? Was that part hard for you, too?” she wrote.
Crockett told CNN in an interview that aired later that evening that she wasn’t “worried” about the president’s digs about her intelligence, but that Trump is “consistently obsessing over two women of color that are members of the House.”
“I don’t know what Black woman hurt him in his past, honey, but it is really taking him through it,” she said.
Trump has a history of questioning the intelligence — or “IQ” — of Black people and people of color. The Guardian published an analysis in 2018 that found that while Trump insulted men, women and people of all races over their intelligence, he tended to focus attacks on “IQ” or intelligence alone when it came to the Black people he targeted.
Kari J. Winter, a professor of American studies at the University at Buffalo whose expertise includes gender, feminism, race and class, said that she believes Trump repeatedly targets Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez with insults about their intelligence because he is “pitching racism and misogyny” to his supporters.
“When Trump insults Crockett and AOC, he is pitching racism and misogyny to his followers — once again encouraging them to give into their basest impulses,” she told HuffPost.
Trump’s repeated attacks on Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez shows he’s “irritated” by their intelligence, Winter said.
Winter believes Trump’s second term as president is proof that he “revels in violence and cruelty.”
“He throws insults around with the relish of an unsupervised toddler in the developmental stage of potty humor,” she said. “For decades he has shown particular animus toward women of color, who he attacks with old tired tropes of racism and misogyny.”
“His repetitious targeting of Jasmine Crockett and AOC suggests that he is frequently irritated by their dazzling intelligence and rhetorical skill,” she continued.
And as for why Trump often talks about someone’s IQ or intelligence? Winter thinks it has to do with his own insecurities.
“He keeps bringing up ‘IQ’ because anyone who listens to him can see that he is not OK,” she said. “He cannot string together a coherent paragraph. He rarely even manages to complete a sentence.”
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When asked to weigh in on the way Ocasio-Cortez responded to Trump’s attacks on X, Winter said that she believes the congresswoman’s mockery of the president can help “rally and encourage the millions of Americans who are determined to fight back against the destruction of our democracy.”
“The road to justice is long, and we need courageous leaders who inspire us with joy and laughter as well as clarity, compassion and unflinching determination,” she said.
