Vice President Kamala Harris said she would take a cognitive test in response to former president Donald Trump’s insults about her low intelligence, challenging her opponent to do the same.
Harris responded to Trump’s Friday remarks in a nearly three-hour interview with podcast king Joe Rogan, in which the GOP nominee called Harris “a very low IQ person” and said she needs to take a cognitive test.
“Sure, I would challenge him to take the same one,” Harris said when asked by CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell over the weekend whether she’d take a cognitive test.
“This is what he has resorted to, and I think he actually is increasingly unstable and unhinged and has resorted to name calling because he actually has no plan for the American people,” Harris said, while she was campaigning in Kalamazoo, Mich.
The Democratic nominee called the former president “increasingly unhinged and unstable” last week after John Kelly, the Trump administration’s longest-serving chief of staff, revealed his former boss while in office had praised Adolf Hitler for commanding loyalty and deference in his generals. The Trump campaign denied he ever made the remarks.
“Don’t take it from me, listen to the people who know him best,” Harris added. “His former chiefs of staff. Most recently, four-star Marine General John Kelly. Listen to two former secretaries of defense who worked for him, listen to his national security adviser, listen to his vice president, who have all, in one way or another, said he is unfit to be president again, should never be president again, and is dangerous.”
Harris has recently ramped up the rhetoric against her opponent, warning Trump will rule like a “fascist” if he returns to the White House. President Joe Biden has done the same, saying Trump should be locked up “politically.”
Top congressional Republicans, Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), condemned Harris’s comments on Friday, suggesting they could invite another assassination attempt against Trump. The former president has already dodged two serious threats.
During his widely popular conversation with Rogan, which racked up over 33 million YouTube views in just three days, Trump took some time to talk about how he regretted some of his choices for White House advisers. He categorized Kelly as one of those poor choices in retrospect, deriding his former chief of staff as a “bully.”
Kelly departed the White House in January 2019 amid reports of heated disagreements with Trump, who later claimed he fired Kelly.
As the election nears, the vice president has increasingly pointed out Trump’s old age to argue that he is unfit to serve as president.
Earlier this month, Harris released a detailed medical report from her physician to prove that she is in “excellent health” and pressured Trump to do the same. The 78-year old Republican nominee has not yet released his medical records, though he told CBS in August he would “very gladly” do so.
When first running for office in 2016, Trump declined to release his medical records. In 2018, the Trump administration released a report from his physician following a physical exam. The report found Trump exhibited “excellent” health at the time, despite having high cholesterol and being overweight.