Topline
President Donald Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court Wednesday on Truth Social, expressing his anger for overturning his landmark tariffs and calling the court’s first Black female justice, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a “Low IQ person”—despite criticism his frequent use of the insult is a racist, sexist trope.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks during the graduation ceremony for American University’s law school at American University in Washington, D.C. on May 20, 2023. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Washington Post via Getty Images
Key Facts
Trump complained that liberal justices consistently vote as a block, while some conservative justices often break with the majority to rule unfavorably against Trump, most notably in overturning his tariffs.
Without naming Jackson, he referred to her as “that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench.”
Jackson, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Joe Biden in 2022, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and cum laude from Harvard law school, then went on to clerk for former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who she succeeded on the court, before becoming a federal public defender, then U.S. district court judge.
Trump’s attack against Jackson fuels the decades-long racism accusations against Trump, including for his frequent use of the “low IQ” insult against Black people and women.
In the Truth Social post attacking Jackson, Trump also criticized the court for “nasty, one sided questions on the country destroying the subject of Birthright Citizenship,” referring to oral arguments in which conservative justices have indicated skepticism about overturning birthright citizenship.
Tangent
Trump most recently used the “low IQ” insult against Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who is Black, on Tuesday, attacking Jeffries in a CNBC interview for criticizing U.S. strikes against Iran. Trump has also insulted the intelligence of several other women of color, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Calif. He’s used the “low IQ” insult against at least two white men, actor Robert De Niro and Tucker Carlson.
Key Background
Public racism accusations against Trump date back to at least the 1970s, when Trump and his father, Fred Trump, were sued by the federal government for allegedly discriminating against African-American and Puerto Rican apartment-rental applicants at their building in Brooklyn. The Trumps denied the accusations and entered into a consent decree with the federal government in 1975 to settle the case. In the 1980s, he famously took out full-page advertisements in major New York City newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers, known as the Central Park Five, facing charges for the rape of a female jogger in the park for which they were wrongly convicted and later exonerated. Trump has also been accused of using the N-word. His nephew, Fred Trump III, alleged in his 2024 book he heard his uncle use the slur while raging about damage to his Cadillac convertible in the 1970s, writing that he recalled Trump saying “Look what the n——s did” while assessing the apparent vandalism. Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung denied the accusation. A former producer of “The Apprentice,” Bill Pruitt, also accused Trump in a 2024 piece for Slate of using the slur to refer to a Black contestant, Kwame Jackson, while questioning during a 2004 meeting whether America would “buy a n—— winning.” Jackson’s former contestant, Omarosa Manigault Newman, who is also Black, alleged in 2018 she heard tapes of Trump using the N-word to refer to Jackson. Trump rejected Manigault-Newman’s accusation at the time, tweeting, “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary.”
Further Reading
Trump Used N-Word, ‘Apprentice’ Producer Says—Biden Calls Foe Racist (Forbes)
Trump’s tactic to attack black people and women: insult their intelligence (The Guardian)
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