While President Donald Trump is no stranger to making gaffes, his latest blunder Wednesday during a press conference in Turkey ignited an online firestorm as critics renewed calls to have the president removed under the 25th Amendment.
Sitting alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump was in Turkey ahead of the NATO summit, and briefly took questions from reporters. He was asked multiple questions regarding the recent U.S. strikes on Iran – officially the Islamic Republic of Iran. In one of his responses, Trump made a remarkable gaffe.
“I told this story yesterday: we had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan,” Trump said, continuing his story without acknowledging or appearing to recognize his mistake.
Writing on X, independent journalist Alex Cole was left aghast by Trump’s gaffe.
“The Islamic Republic of Japan? His brain is gone,” Cole wrote in an online post to his more than 326,000 followers. “Time for grandpa to take another cognitive test.”
Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois simply wrote “25th Amendment” in response to a viral clip of Trump’s remarks, and others accused the press of holding Trump's gaffes to a different standard than those of former President Joe Biden.
“Something something Joe Biden’s cognitive something something,” wrote Joanne Carducci, a prominent liberal influencer, in a social media post on X to her more than 1 million followers.
“Remember the week-long news cycle when Biden confused Mexico and Egypt because I sure do,” noted Rolling Stone politics reporter Nikki McCann Ramírez in a social media post on X to her nearly 34,000 followers.
Trump made several blunders during the press conference, including mistakenly referring to Zelenskyy by the wrong name and struggling to understand reporters’ questions.
The Islamic Republic of Japan? His brain is gone. Time for grandpa to take another cognitive test. https://t.co/Vb7zb1ZeLm
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 8, 2026