President Trump is being criticized for remarks he made deriding U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) at a rally in Kentucky on Thursday. The President criticized Massie’s intelligence and educational credentials while boasting of his own while reportedly also neglecting to mention Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, a Kentucky-native who was killed in the Iran war on Sunday.
Trump tried to belittle Massie, who has been critical of the President’s actions in Iran and on other issues, saying of the Republican Congressman: “I know a lot of stupid people that went to a good college. And my uncle was the longest serving professor in the history of that particular college, university, MIT…So that means I have much better blood, if you go by that. But I went to the hardest college of all to get into, the Wharton school of finance, that means I’m real smart.”
Note: Massie, who earned a BS in electrical engineering and a MS in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is known to occasionally disagree with and vote against Trump’s policies. He was also instrumental in pushing for the complete release of the Epstein Files, which Trump has called a “hoax,” telling Americans to “move on” from the Epstein issue.
It does not speak well of us as a nation that so many of us have gotten used to how bonkers this is.
It also reeks of status envy and insecurity, which you’d think wouldn’t really afflict the most powerful man in the world, but he seems acutely aware that he’s not very smart. https://t.co/fEz0FAHDR8— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 11, 2026
Political scientist and former Naval War College professor Tom Nichols (who holds degrees from Boston University, Columbia University, and Georgetown) responded: “It does not speak well of us as a nation that so many of us have gotten used to how bonkers this is. It also reeks of status envy and insecurity, which you’d think wouldn’t really afflict the most powerful man in the world, but he seems acutely aware that he’s not very smart.”
Trump. Our President. Never have personally encountered anyone this strange, insecure, crass, impulsive, unaware, boastful. Not a good observation on America. Seems as if our country is massively beginning to wake up. https://t.co/sxx80vgxnW
— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) March 12, 2026
Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey (graduate of American and Harvard) also responded: “Trump. Our President. Never have personally encountered anyone this strange, insecure, crass, impulsive, unaware, boastful. Not a good observation on America. Seems as if our country is massively beginning to wake up.”
Note: After attending two years at Fordham University, Trump transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1968 with a BS in economics. Contrary to Trump’s claims that he was top of his class with the highest grades possible, Wharton’s published academic honors and dean’s list do not include his name. Trump’s paternal uncle, John Trump, was a highly regarded Professor at MIT; he died in 1985.