Former President Donald Trump is back in the hot seat once again for questions about his mental fortitude after he seemed to call his wife “Mercedes.”
The alleged slip from Trump came on Saturday while he was speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The former president appeared to be referring to his wife, saying she was a great First Lady, sparking a standing ovation from the crowd.
“My wife, our great First Lady—people love her,” Trump said of Melania Trump.
Moments later, after loud applause, he turned and said, “Mercedes, that’s pretty good!”
Trump and his allies have since said he was referring to Mercedes Schlapp, a political commentator and the wife of the American Conservative Union chair and former White House staffer Matt Schlapp.
“Fake News at its finest,” Mercedes Schlapp said in a post on social media after the event when reports of the gaff started circulating.
Whether or not saying Mercedes was on purpose, Trump has had slip-ups before with the women in life, including when he misidentified author E. Jean Carroll as his ex-wife Marla Maples in a deposition for the sexual abuse lawsuit brought by Carroll.
Trump also was criticized for mixing up GOP presidential nominee candidate Nikki Haley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this year when he said Haley hadn’t activated the National Guard to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2023.
Haley was not in Congress or had anything to do with the Capitol on that day.
In a statement sent to Forbes, the Trump campaign disregarded the remarks, saying, “the crazy leftists on X continue to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and that’s why they lie about everything.”
However, there was no clarification offered for the remarks.