Donald Trump Addresses Rumors He Forgot Melania's Name

Donald Trump has hit out against President Joe Biden's suggestion that his White House predecessor forgot the name of his wife, Melania Trump.

Biden's forgetfulness has become an increasingly sore spot for his 2024 reelection campaign, highlighted in Special Counsel Robert Hur's recent remarks characterizing the president as "an elderly man with a poor memory." Saying that his "memory is fine," Biden and a number of his associates have denied the claim.

During an appearance on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday, Biden, 81, turned the tables on Donald Trump, 77, when he suggested that his Republican rival had cognitive issues of his own.

When asked by host Seth Meyers about his age being "a real concern for American voters," Biden responded: "Well, a couple of things. Number one, you got to take a look at the other guy. He's about as old as I am but he can't remember his wife's name."

Biden later posted the video on X, formerly Twitter, adding the caption: "The other guy and I are about the same age. The question in this election is: How old are your ideas? He wants to take us back 60 years. I'm focused on the future."

The president appeared to be referring to Donald Trump's recent CPAC address, following which some claimed he had referred to his wife Melania as Mercedes.

"Well look, my wife, our great first lady, she was great... people love her," Trump told the CPAC crowd on Saturday. The audience applauded, to which Trump responded "Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that's pretty good!"

The comments were picked up online as apparent proof of Trump's "cognitive decline."

However, Trump has now hit out at such suggestions in a fiery video shared on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.

"The radical left Democrats are at it again," the former star of The Apprentice said. "They're constantly making up stories about me, because their candidate is a mental and physical basket case. There has never been anything like it."

After calling Biden "the worst president in the history of our country," Trump said that the president "went on a very poorly rated show last night, and he talked about Donald Trump and his wife, [alleging that] I don't know the name of my wife.

"He was referring to the fact that at CPAC, we had a sold out speech—the biggest audience they've had in years, I think, maybe ever. I made the statement that Melania was very popular because when I mentioned her name, the audience went wild. I then looked at the two people man and wife Matt and Mercedes Schlapp. Then I said, 'Wow, they really like the first lady. So this got taken as the fact that I thought Mercedes was the first lady. It has nothing to do with that."

While the nature of Biden's memory comment on Monday may have been light-hearted, in keeping with the comedic tone of the show, it was nonetheless based on an inaccurate premise.

As was pointed out in a fact check by Newsweek, Trump had been referring in his speech to Mercedes Schlapp, his former White House director of strategic communications, and wife of CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp.

Trump had mentioned Mercedes on several occasions throughout his speech on Saturday. Mercedes Schlapp quickly responded on Sunday via X, calling the claim against Trump "Fake News at its finest."

Newsweek has contacted a representative of Biden via email for comment.

Elsewhere in his video, Trump accused the Democrats of being "really dishonest," adding: "They make up things constantly."

He then said he has previously suggested that former President Barack Obama is currently in office "purposely for comedic reasons and for sarcasm, because a lot of people say that Obama is running the country, not Biden, because he's sleeping all the time." The result, Trump stated, is that people believe he doesn't know the name of the current president.

Trump also said in his video that he has imitated Biden "getting off the stage. What they do is they say, 'Oh, he had trouble getting off the stage. I have no trouble getting off the stage. Anybody that watches what I do at rallies would say, 'Wow, that's amazing. He can go two hours without a teleprompter and not make even a little mistake. Very few people—maybe almost nobody—can do what I do."

"The disinformation of the Democrats is unbelievable," Trump added, concluding that Biden "should not be leading this country. And hopefully on November 5, he's not going to be. We're gonna have a big election. We're gonna have a big victory. And we're gonna Make America Great Again."

While in the CPAC instance it appears Trump didn't make an error, he has been dogged by gaffes, including slurring his words during campaign speeches and appearing to confuse Nikki Haley with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This has led to critics accusing the the onetime real estate mogul of being too old to run for president and rumors about his cognitive decline.

Trump has boasted about having "aced" cognitive tests on more than one occasion and has frequently defended his mental acuity in recent months.

For his part, Biden has also been criticized for making a series of gaffes including confusing current French President Emmanuel Macron with François Mitterrand earlier this month. Mitterrand died in 1996 after he was president from 1981 to 1995.

A Monmouth University poll of 737 registered voters in October found 48 percent of people think Trump is too old to run again, including a third of Republicans. The figure was 76 percent for Biden.