Trump's favorite excuse in 2025: "I don't know"

Trump’s favorite excuse in 2025: “I don’t know”
From Epstein to MRIs, the president fakes ignorance

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published December 22, 2025 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) Donald Trump is too slow to pick up on important information and too lazy to learn.

No, this is not the assessment of some #Resistance holdover posting 20 times a day on Bluesky. As 2025 comes to a close, this is the message that the White House wants most dearly for the public to absorb: The most powerful man in the world is far too dim to be held responsible to the nation he was elected to lead. Trump loves to brag about how he passed — or so he says — the test doctors use to screen for dementia. But when he is asked about anything harder and more politically fraught than “can you draw a clock?” or “is this a picture of a duck?,” the president is always quick with his favorite go-to answer: “I don’t know.”

When asked why he pardoned a Jan. 6 rioter who attacked a police officer with a stun gun, Trump replied, “I don’t know, was it a pardon?” (It was, which is why the reporter asked.) When asked why he got an MRI and what part of the body they scanned, he responded: “No idea.” When asked about a recently released batch of photos showing him partying with Jeffrey Epstein — who called Trump “my closest friend for 10 years” and referred to himself as “Don’s best friend” — the president said, “I know nothing about it.”

Variations of “I don’t know” — including “I don’t understand” and “I don’t know anything — have become Trump’s favorite response throughout the year when asked about the deceased sex offender, who spoke to him multiple times a week, the New York Times reported. One notable exception: snapping “quiet, piggy!” at a reporter who pressed him about Epstein, a man Trump spoke more fondly of than any of his wives.

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When asked about pardoning a notorious but wealthy Honduran drug trafficker, despite claiming he wants to wage literal war on drugs, Trump said, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” When asked about blowing up boats of Venezuelans accused, without evidence, of drug trafficking, which he had previously bragged about doing, he replied, “I don’t know that happened.” When asked about pardoning a cryptocurrency dealer who facilitated a deal that reportedly earned Trump billions, he responded, “I know nothing about it.” When asked if he has to uphold the Constitution, which he swore to do on Inauguration Day, the president claimed, “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer.” When asked if due process is a right, which is explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, he said, “I don’t know.” When asked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing classified information on an unsecured third party messaging app, he replied, “I don’t know anything about it.” When talking about what his wife, Melania Trump, is up to, he observed, “I don’t know what it is she’s doing.” ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/12/22/trumps-favorite-excuse-in-2025-i-dont-know/