Is Trump a racist? Let’s look at the stats

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Last month, when MAGA luminaries Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Joe Kent turned on Trump over his impulsive war against Iran and his threat to destroy its “whole civilization,” Trump decried this gang as “low IQ.” That was an unusual move for him—in that three of the four are white.

As has been observed by others, Trump often hurls the “low IQ” insult at Black people. For some, that’s a sign he’s a racist. There certainly are others: His family real estate business was sued in the 1970s by the Justice Department for racial discrimination; he exploited the racially charged case of the Central Park Five in 1989, when five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger; he peddled the racist and fraudulent birther conspiracy about Barack Obama; people who worked with him on The Apprentice say he used racial slurs, including the n-word; he referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as “shithole countries”; he called on Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to their home countries; he characterized Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists; during a 2020 campaign debate, he refused to condemn white supremacists; he has appointed people with racist records and ties to white nationalists; he shared a video on social media that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

Then there’s his vicious assault on DEI and wokeness—and his hiring practices. As of the 300-day mark of his current term, 91 percent of his confirmed appointees were white. For Biden that figure was 61 percent. (About 60 percent of the current US population is white.) Photos like this one of Trump’s US attorneys tell the story:

Look, there’s one brown guy! And only a handful of gals.

So it’s not tough to make the case that Trump is a racist. And it’s easy to cite his frequent use of “low IQ” to denigrate Black people as another data point showing he’s a bigot. But might Trump just be a jerk who calls a lot of his critics and foes “low IQ”?

I asked the director of a research shop—which would prefer to not be named—to crunch the numbers on this. These bean counters looked at both Trump’s social media posts and his public statements. The findings are no surprise.

Since April 10, Trump has zapped out nine Truth Social posts deploying the “low IQ” tag. Six times his missive referred to a Black person.

This team examined his Truth Social posts for the past four years, ending on April 10. In that stretch, Trump called individuals and communities “low IQ” at least 50 times, and 60 percent of these instances involved Black public figures and legislators. These targets included Vice President Kamala Harris; Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.); the Rev. Al Sharpton; New York Attorney General Letitia James; and political strategist Donna Brazile. The white people he excoriated in this fashion included Joe Biden, Tim Walz, Liz Cheney, and Robert De Niro. 

Since April 10, Trump has zapped out nine Truth Social posts deploying the “low IQ” tag. Six times his missive referred to a Black person—House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, or Owens. Once the target was Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.); another time, Carlson. And there was that post that railed against his MAGA antagonists: Kelly, Kent, Carlson, and Owens.

The tilt is clear. Trump reaches for this characterization more often when he’s denouncing Black people. Notice, though, that it’s just not Black people but Black women who draw much of Trump’s wrath.

That pattern holds when the data set expands beyond his Truth Social rants. Those researchers also scrutinized a collection of Trump’s public statements for the past 10 years, searching through a repository of C-SPAN videos that covered Trump speaking at rallies, press briefings, and other events. They found he deployed the “low IQ” aspersion at least 75 times. Forty of these instances—53 percent—targeted Black people. He also used it to describe Somali and Hispanic immigrants.

Trump has often derided Obama’s intelligence and suggested he was accepted at Columbia University and Harvard Law School only due to his race. The idea that the first Black president was a smart fellow seems to be too tough for Trump to accept.

Harris clocked in with the most mentions (23). Biden was next (17). Then came Waters (8), Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (5), and Crockett (3). Trump claimed Harris was too “low IQ” to be president. In October, he said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was “low IQ” and could not pass a cognitive test.

Last week, speaking at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida full of Trumpers, he also declared that Barack Obama could not pass a cognitive test. In the past, he has often derided Obama’s intelligence and suggested he was accepted at Columbia University and Harvard Law School only due to his race. The idea that the first Black president was a smart fellow seems to be too tough for Trump to accept.

If you want to get technical—and give Trump the benefit of the doubt—you could argue that since Democrats (and Democratic politicians) are disproportionately Black compared to the overall population, Trump’s political enemies will more likely be Black than an average sampling of Americans. Consequently, more targets of his “low IQ” slur will be Black. But it does seem that Trump often picks nasty fights with Black opponents—and relishes doing so. And there are plenty of ways to assail a political foe without calling him or her an idiot.

Trump has long displayed an obsession with IQ. He believes people are either born with intelligence or they’re not, and he has asserted that immigrants have brought “bad genes” into the country. He has frequently boasted his IQ is sky-high, attributing that to his “good genes” and pointing to his uncle, John Trump, who was a highly accomplished MIT professor. He has never made public any IQ test he’s taken, though he regularly brags about passing cognitive tests that screen for dementia. (Lion, rhinoceros, camel!) For him, “low IQ” is one of the most stinging insults he can sling. It’s hard not to attach significance to the fact that he so often hurls this barb at Black people.

To make the case that Trump is a racist, it’s not necessary to rely on his use of this epithet. But it’s an obvious piece of evidence. One would have to be not the sharpest tool in the shed to not see the connection.