Trump’s favorite excuse in 2025: “I don’t know”

Donald Trump is too slow to pick up on important information and too lazy to learn.

No, this is not the assessment of some #Resistance holdover posting 20 times a day on Bluesky. As 2025 comes to a close, this is the message that the White House wants most dearly for the public to absorb: The most powerful man in the world is far too dim to be held responsible to the nation he was elected to lead. Trump loves to brag about how he passed — or so he says — the test doctors use to screen for dementia. But when he is asked about anything harder and more politically fraught than “can you draw a clock?” or “is this a picture of a duck?,” the president is always quick with his favorite go-to answer: “I don’t know.”

When asked why he pardoned a Jan. 6 rioter who attacked a police officer with a stun gun, Trump replied, “I don’t know, was it a pardon?” (It was, which is why the reporter asked.) When asked why he got an MRI and what part of the body they scanned, he responded: “No idea.” When asked about a recently released batch of photos showing him partying with Jeffrey Epstein — who called Trump “my closest friend for 10 years” and referred to himself as “Don’s best friend” — the president said, “I know nothing about it.”

Variations of “I don’t know” — including “I don’t understand” and “I don’t know anything — have become Trump’s favorite response throughout the year when asked about the deceased sex offender, who spoke to him multiple times a week, the New York Times reported. One notable exception: snapping “quiet, piggy!” at a reporter who pressed him about Epstein, a man Trump spoke more fondly of than any of his wives. 

When he was asked about Casey Means, an anti-science influencer he nominated as surgeon general, Trump said, “I don’t know her.” This response came less than 24 hours after he sung her praises on Truth Social: “Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding.” (Means did not complete her medical residency and does not have an active medical license.)

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When asked about pardoning a notorious but wealthy Honduran drug trafficker, despite claiming he wants to wage literal war on drugs, Trump said, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” When asked about blowing up boats of Venezuelans accused, without evidence, of drug trafficking, which he had previously bragged about doing, he replied, “I don’t know that happened.” When asked about pardoning a cryptocurrency dealer who facilitated a deal that reportedly earned Trump billions, he responded, “I know nothing about it.” When asked if he has to uphold the Constitution, which he swore to do on Inauguration Day, the president claimed, “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer.” When asked if due process is a right, which is explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, he said, “I don’t know.” When asked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing classified information on an unsecured third party messaging app, he replied, “I don’t know anything about it.” When talking about what his wife, Melania Trump, is up to, he observed, “I don’t know what it is she’s doing.”

There are so many more examples, but you get the picture. President Harry Truman once said, “The buck stops here.” Donald Trump says, “The buck? I don’t know what that is.”

The purpose of this gambit is to deflect accountability for his growing pile of failures, corruption and scandals. But the cumulative effect is to paint a picture of man who is profoundly, almost impossibly, dim-witted. If you take his “I don’t knows” at face value — which he presumably wants his followers to do — it makes it hard to believe Trump “aced” that “do you have dementia” test he’s always talking about.

While allowing that age is obviously catching up to Trump, it’s also clear that, in most of these cases, he’s just lying. Of course he knows about all the stuff he did for the decade-plus that he was best bros with the world’s most infamous sexual predator. He definitely knows why he got an MRI, and he also knows full well that the Constitution outlines the laws he is obliged to follow. Trump plays dumb to reporters to get them off his back, and when that doesn’t work, he calls them names, especially if they’re women.

Still, the president’s willingness to play the stupidest man alive is telling, because he is also a narcissist who has spent his entire adult life demanding that people believe he is the smartest, most handsome, most perfect person who has ever walked the face of the planet. He’s dubbed himself a “super genius” who understands every topic under the sun — including money, trade, history, international relations, travel, the military, ISIS and spycraft — better than anyone else.

“I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true!” Trump declared in 2015. As he has pivoted from this declaration a decade later, one would think his ego would bruise from his non-stop insistence that he’s too ignorant for anyone to expect him to know things.

Trump used to have a tactic to square his competing needs to pretend he’s smart without actually saying anything meaningful to reporters: the two weeks gambit. When asked a question he couldn’t or didn’t want to answer, whether it was about his health care policy or infrastructure plans, Trump would declare he and his team were huddled up, working hard on an answer, which would be gloriously announced in two weeks. Usually “two weeks” meant “never,” which most reporters eventually figured out.

But even up until June of this year, Trump often relied on the “two weeks” gambit to escape accountability. He liked creating the illusion of thinking and researching, while doing absolutely nothing to address the pressing matter. He hoped two weeks would make the issue go away, but if it didn’t, he just kicked the can down the road again, saying he needed another couple of weeks and then he’d have the answers. Now, however, he just says “I don’t know” until people stop asking.

Perhaps Trump wants his base to confuse him for their doddering grandfathers. History certainly suggests the MAGA base doesn’t expect the man who leads them to have any redeeming qualities to earn their loyalty, so they won’t be disillusioned by a president who doesn’t know anything and won’t even try.

It’s frustrating that he gets away with this, but there’s a silver lining. Even Trump himself seems to be getting tired of his own tactics. He can’t manage to work up the energy for a more convincing deflection. He’s bored and tired, his polls are falling and, with three years left, his second term already feels like it’s running on fumes.

“I don’t know” is the deflection of a man who has run out of more interesting lies to tell. It’s a small thing, but one of the many green shoots suggesting that, while this is not the end of MAGA, it may very well be the end’s beginning.

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