“I Don’t Know.” Trump’s Go-To Response to All Sorts of Questions

President Donald Trump keeps saying he doesn’t know what his own administration is up to.

Three times in the last week, Trump responded to questions about his signature policies by expressing ignorance.

Is he truly clueless? Is he fully aware of the answer but using ignorance as a cover? Whatever the case, the White House doesn’t want to talk about it.

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

The first instance came in comments to NBC News’s Kristen Welker on May 4. Though Trump has twice placed his hand on a Bible and sworn, to the best of his ability, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he seemed to have forgotten those oaths on “Meet the Press.” Asked whether everyone in the United States is entitled to due process — the constitutional rights enshrined in both the Fifth and the Fourteenth amendments — Trump was foggy.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer,” he said. “I don’t know.”

When reports surfaced May 7 that Trump planned to deport hundreds of immigrants to Libya, a reporter put the question to him: “Is your administration sending migrants to Libya?”

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “You’ll have to ask the Department of Homeland Security.”

While fielding questions that same day in the Oval Office, Trump was asked whether he agreed with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s comments about potential tariff exemptions for products that families rely on, such as baby car seats. Trump, again, appeared vexed. “I don’t know, I’ll think about it,” the president said. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer.”

Trump repeatedly cast his predecessor, President Joe Biden, as senile and inept. “He can’t do an interview. He’s incompetent,” Trump said of Biden while he was running for president in 2020. “To be president, you have to be sharp and tough and so many other things.” During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump derided Biden’s “hazy memory” and dusted off his “Sleepy Joe” dig from the prior election cycle. “I’m not sure that Biden knows what the hell’s going on,” Trump said last year. “I don’t think he knows he’s alive, actually.”

In 2020, Trump bragged about passing a mental competence test. “I aced it,” he said of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test, noting it was “very hard,” specifically the last five questions. The test is not, however, supposed to be hard if you aren’t suffering from some form of dementia.

During a press gaggle last month, Trump boasted about the results of a more recent test. “I wanted to be a little different than Biden. I took a cognitive test and I don’t know what to tell you other than I got every answer right,” he boasted. Asked if it was the same one he had taken in 2020, Trump replied: “I think it’s a pretty well-known test. Whatever it is, I got every one.”

A little more than a minute later, Trump was asked about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador for alleged ties to the MS-13 gang.

“How do you plan to respond to the Supreme Court ruling and the other courts about the gentleman who was in Maryland who was put in the El Salvador prison?” asked a reporter.

“Is that the one that was not Tren de Aragua but he was MS-13?” Trump said.

“Just the one that they’ve said needs to come back,” the reporter responded.

“Was he MS-13? ’Cause I only know about that,” Trump offered. “I mean, I don’t know which one.”