Speaking to Breitbart News in an interview at the tail end of 2023, former President Donald Trump claimed that Democrat and presidential candidate Ted Kennedy told him that Biden was the “dumbest guy in the Senate.” Trump also argued that he knows President Biden “very well,” which is well enough to know that Joe is a “very vicious guy.”
Trump apparently knew Ted Kennedy through being near him in Palm Beach, as the Kennedy family once had an estate on Palm Beach, near Mar-a-Lago. The Kennedy family sold the estate, once called the “Winter White House” by President JFK, in the summer of 2020. Ted Kennedy died in 2009 and served in the Senate alongside now-President Joe Biden for the full length of Bidne’s Senate career, from 1973 to 2009.
In any case, speaking to Breitbart News about Biden, Trump began by saying that he knows Biden now and that that knowledge is critical to success. He said, “I ran against him. I got far more votes than I did the first time. I feel I know him very well. A lot of times in dealmaking you know a person better if you’re doing deals than if you’re with that person all the time.”
Continuing, Trump argued that Biden is surrounded by “vicious” radicals, saying, “He’s surrounded by vicious people, radical left people, and people that are ultimately going to destroy him. They give no quarter. They’re willing to do anything like weaponize the Justice Department and the FBI and all of those things can come back to hurt Joe and them and everybody else ultimately.”
He then argued that Biden manages to keep that knife-fighter attitude a secret, but that it is there nonetheless. He said, “There’s a level of viciousness that you don’t see. Joe Biden is a very vicious guy. He’s not a smart guy—not smart at all. All you have to do is look at his academic credentials. But he’s a very vicious guy.”
That’s when the former President got to what Teddy Kennedy allegedly told him about now-President Joe Biden and Biden’s intelligence. Beginning that part of his comments, Trump explained how he got to know Ted Kennedy, saying, “He’s got this image of ‘nice,’ when Ted Kennedy—who I knew very well, he’s a Palm Beach guy, rich family, had a house on the ocean a mile down the road. I was very friendly with him for various reasons.”
Continuing, he explained how the topic of Biden’s intelligence came up. He noted that it was during a conversation about members of the Senate and who the smartest Senators are, saying, “I said to Ted Kennedy, ‘who’s the smartest guy in the Senate?’ He gave me a name I won’t tell you because I cannot stand the guy but it was really true he’s a smart guy.”
Biden was not one of them. Rather, Biden was, according to Mr. Kennedy, one of the dumbest. Trump, recounting that, said, “Then I said ‘who’s the dumbest?’ He said ‘probably Joe.’ I said ‘who’s Joe?’ He said ‘Joe Biden.’ I said ‘why is he the dumbest?’ He said ‘it’s because he doesn’t understand concepts, he doesn’t understand policy, and he doesn’t understand anything that is complicated like taxes and various other things.’”
Kennedy then tried to mitigate the criticism somewhat, Trump said, saying, “But, he said, ‘he’s hale and hearty and well-meant.’ It’s true, sort of, with the smile—you could see a friendliness there, but it’s not friendliness. Ted Kennedy said he’s the dumbest guy in the Senate and now he’s our president.”
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