Trump appears to forget Dem leader's name hours after meeting: 'The nice gentleman'

While unveiling a new initiative aimed at lowering drug prices during a press conference Tuesday, President Donald Trump spoke to how the announcement could impact his ongoing discussions with two key Democratic Party leaders, and in the process, appeared to forget the name of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

Trump held a meeting Monday with congressional leaders of both parties – House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House and Senate minority leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jeffries – all in the hopes of averting a government shutdown. The meeting yielded no results, however, with most lawmakers all expecting the government to shut down Tuesday at midnight.

Trump, however, appeared to share some optimism during the presser that his new push to lower drug prices could help the two parties reach an agreement on spending, and thereby, make a potential government shutdown short lived. While delivering his comments on the matter, however, Trump appeared to forget a key player in the discussions.

“[The initiative to reduce drug prices] has a big impact, even on the discussion that we'll have with Chuck Schumer, who was here yesterday along with... uh... the... a very... nice gentleman who I didn't really know, you know who I'm talking about,” Trump told reporters at the presser in Washington, D.C. “The two of them came and we had a good discussion, and we're going to see what happens, but this has a huge impact on that.”

Trump’s apparent memory lapse comes just hours after he had shared a deepfake video on social media depicting Jeffries, wearing a sombrero and a handlebar mustache to the well-known “Mexican hat dance” song, standing alongside Schumer, whose voice was emulated using generative artificial intelligence to say disparaging remarks about the Democratic Party.

Jeffries had already fired back at Trump for sharing the deepfake video, which he called “disgusting,” by sharing an image of Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, alongside the caption “this is real,” an apparent nod to Trump’s social media post being artificially created using GenAI.

Trump went on to champion the presser as “one of the biggest news conferences, from a medical standpoint, that I think has ever been had by any administration,” and claimed that it would help reduce drug costs by “over 1,000%” in just a year’s time, a claim that has been ridiculed by economists.