§25 —
On low IQ
Democrat
TRUMP
Now, I'd have let the whole thing alone — a man calls people names, that is not news — except for one thing that keeps sitting in front of me, which is the grader's own paper. December of 2016: China's move was "unpresidented" 1. December of 2018: the "smocking gun" 1. May of 2017, at midnight, the word "covfefe", posted at midnight and left unfinished 1. January of 2019, the White House feast: "hamberders" 1. I am not making a claim about anybody's mind. I would not know how. I am saying the file of somebody handing out a grade on intelligence twenty-four times has four spelling corrections in it, and Fox News is the outlet that kept the list.
And there is a second reason to be careful with the grade, which is that we already know where American intelligence went, and it was not ancestry. Researchers ran childhood lead exposure against the population: leaded gasoline alone took an estimated 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million living Americans, about 2.6 points a person, 5.9 for the cohort born between 1966 and 1970 2. The CDC's position is that no safe blood lead level in children has ever been identified 3. The rule requiring water systems to replace virtually all lead service lines within ten years survived the change of administration — then the same agency issued guidance in May that former officials said hands utilities the language not to dig 4. So one file grades a Supreme Court justice on how she found her way to the bench. The other file has the tonnage, the map, and the money, three billion of which went out six months late 5. Only one of those two can be pulled out of the ground and thrown away, and I would like to know why that is the one running behind.
Sources
- "Unpresidented" (Dec 2016), "smocking gun" (Dec 2018), "covfefe" (May 2017), "hamberders" (Jan 2019) — Fox News ↑
- Leaded gasoline cost an estimated 824 million IQ points across 170+ million Americans; 2.6 points average, 5.9 for the 1966-1970 cohort — PNAS, 7 March 2022 ↑
- No safe blood lead level in children has been identified — CDC, Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention ↑
- The Lead and Copper Rule Improvements require replacing virtually all lead service lines within ten years; May 2026 compliance guidance criticized as giving utilities grounds not to replace — E&E News, 6 May 2026 ↑
- $3 billion for lead service line replacement released after a six-month delay, out of $15 billion in the infrastructure law — EDF Health, 23 December 2025 ↑
Republican
LOW IQ
I want to start with the tally, because somebody counted, and I like it when somebody counts. Between January of 2025 and April of this year, twenty-four posts on the president's own platform used "low IQ" or a variation of it, and eighty-four percent of them were aimed at a Black or Brown person 1. In April he applied it to a sitting Supreme Court justice — "that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench" 2. I wrote that one out longhand. Found her way. That's a phrase about how somebody got somewhere, not about how they think.
Now, I'd have left it as a habit of speech, except there's an older page in the file and it changes what the habit is. September of 2020, Bemidji, Minnesota, to a nearly all-white crowd: "You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it? Don't you believe? The racehorse theory" 3. The racehorse theory is a breeding idea — bloodlines produce stock. So the file has a theory of who is born capable, and a phrase used two dozen times to sort people, and the sorting comes out eighty-four percent one way. There is one more page, and on it the grader grades himself: January 2018, his two greatest assets are “mental stability and being, like, really smart,” revised in the same sitting to “not smart, but genius ... and a very stable genius at that” 4. I'm not concluding anything. I'm noticing the pages are in one folder.
Sources
- 24 posts using "low IQ" from 20 January 2025 to 25 April 2026; 84 percent aimed at a person of color — Truthout, 27 April 2026 ↑
- Trump calls Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson "that new, Low IQ person" — Forbes, 22 April 2026 ↑
- "You have good genes... the racehorse theory" — Bemidji rally — Star Tribune, 19 September 2020 ↑
- "my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart"; "not smart, but genius ... and a very stable genius at that" — posted 6 January 2018 — The Washington Post, 6 January 2018 ↑
“Low IQ. I have the tally: twenty-four posts since January of last year, eighty-four percent of them pointed at a Black or Brown person, one of them a sitting Supreme Court justice. Then I have the other file — 824 million points, taken off half the country, by a metal, with the tonnage and the address of every pipe. Sorry, one thing before you go. The first file grades people. The second one names the cause and prices it. Which of the two has a work order attached to it?”— Lou
“He's been handing out the grade for a year and a half — twenty-four times, eighty-four percent of them at a Black or Brown face. Meanwhile the thing that actually took points off American kids is a metal, it's in the service line, it cost 824 million of them, and the pipe money went out six months late. The man with the red pen is standing on the cause.”
“The president is a very strong communicator who speaks in a rhythm, and the spelling is part of the rhythm — and the pipes, look, the pipes are an infrastructure conversation, the IQ thing is a communications conversation, and if we combine them we get whatever this is.”