Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed delivered a blistering takedown of Donald Trump and his cognitive ability as the pair held dueling rallies in Michigan.
Speaking at a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, El-Sayed said, “It’s not his fault he’s stupid,” before slamming Trump’s repeated bragging about taking cognitive tests.
“I remember in my neurology unit, I would have to give that MoCA exam. You know, the cognitive test he’s so proud of,” El-Sayed said of his time in medical school, referring to the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.
“The only people that you give a MoCA test to are people who you worry may have cognitive deficits,” he continued. “By definition, if you’re taking one of those tests, something’s wrong.”
This comes as Trump has repeatedly bragged about taking the test at a series of rallies ahead of the midterms.
“The first one they show you is a Lion, a bear, a snake, and a giraffe, and they say, ‘Which one is the giraffe?’ Okay,” Trump told a crowd in Kansas before blasting the media in the room. “None of those people could come close to getting a perfect score, but I got it three times. I got a perfect score.”
Just days earlier, he made a similar brag at a campaign rally in Arizona, where he claimed the assessor asked which one was the lion.
But in Michigan, the crowd roared with laughter as El-Sayed kept roasting Trump’s repeated claims.
“You know the doctor who gave it to him was just like, ‘I just want to see how smart you are, sir,’” the Democratic candidate said. “And he’s like, ‘Me too.’”
“He brags about having taken it. He’s like, ‘I remembered. I remembered the rhinoceros,’” he added. “You’re like, ‘Habibi, everybody remembered the rhinoceros.’”
“And the funny thing about it is, you know, he’s taken it multiple times, so he’s not even bragging about the first time he took it. He’s like, ‘I took it the first time, and then I took it the second time,’” he said.
“So with Donald Trump, you can’t blame him for this. He’s just dumb. You can blame him for the narcissism,” El-Sayed added before slamming his Republican opponent Mike Rogers.
“Can you imagine how small of a human being you have to be to know that the man in front of you has real deficits and to just nod your head approvingly at the most ridiculous s--- that the man proposes,” he concluded.
Later in the rally, El-Sayed noted that Trump was also campaigning in the state on Sunday and pointed out that the president has repeatedly brought up Sen. Jon Husted’s “a--.”
“When I get to D.C., I’m just going to make sure that I never let him see mine,” El-Sayed joked before, gesturing to his face. “Keep it here, Donald, right here.”
Trump was across the state earlier in the day for a rally in Port Huron, where he repeated his story about looking at the Ohio senator’s physique and also brought up rapper Nikki Minaj, who was in attendance.
“I told in fun, I said, ‘I looked at his a--.’ And I’ve never done that with a man before; it’s true. Off the record: women yes, men no, ok?” Trump said. “By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful a-- before, Nikki Minaj. That’s hard to miss.”
Ahead of El-Sayed taking aim at Trump, the president fired back, calling him a “fake doctor,” a line that he’s repeated multiple times on the stump.
While the Democratic Senate candidate holds a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Oxford University, he never completed his residency or became licensed to practice medicine.
