“The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions ‘mentally retarded’ and ‘a dumb southerner,’” Donald Trump tweeted late Tuesday night. “I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!”
”Never used those terms on anyone,” eh?
Really? “I know I was criticized in one magazine where the writer was retarded,” Trump said on the Howard Stern Show in April 2004.
Never? “I have a golf pro who’s mentally retarded. I mean he’s really not a smart guy,” Trump said, also on the Howard Stern Show, in September 2004.
Also, according to three staffers, Trump repeatedly called deaf actress Marlee Matlin retarded during her 2011 stint on Celebrity Apprentice.
Trump is presumably pushing back on that specific claim in Bob Woodward’s book Fear because, well, southerners are an important constituency for him. Republican senators from the South have expressed what passes for criticism of Trump among Republicans these days over the issue, with Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe saying “I’m a Southerner, too. I think it’s not at all appropriate. It’s totally inappropriate.” But it seems like everyone believes Trump did say what Woodward reported he said—and no wonder. It’s classic Trump.