- Former President
Donald Trump mused about embracing being portrayed as adictator . - Trump made the remarks at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla. on Thursday night.
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday joked about being depicted as "a dictator" by the press, which he assumed was the result of $4.
"Which would you rather be, a dumb person or a dictator?" Trump said Thursday night at the Heritage Foundation's annual leadership conference in Florida at the Ritz-Carlton resort on Amelia Island.
"Perhaps a dictator would be better," he continued. "I don't want to be a dumb person."
—Acyn (@Acyn) $4
In the same speech, Trump said he was $4 that he told the president of a NATO country in a closed door meeting that the US would not come to their protection if they didn't increase their defense spending.
Experts on authoritarianism have $4 of his own, culminating in the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.
In the former president's assessment, the dictator chatter only began because he did so well on a
"First they said, 'Not too smart,'" Trump said earlier in his speech. "Well that all went away, and I said, 'Doc Ronny [Jackson], I gotta take a test.' He said, "You know the problem is, sir, this is essentially a public place.' One of the great hospitals of the world, right? You have a series of doctors sitting there and all, and if you do badly, the word's gonna get out ... And I did it in front of a panel, and we aced it. And the one person said, 'That's the first time I've ever seen anyone ace it.' So all of that stuff stopped ... but then they made me a dictator instead."
The test Trump took is called the $4, designed to detect signs of dementia.
It was also the source of his viral "$4" remarks from July 2020.