Former President Joe Biden turned heads Friday when he declared his own intellectual superiority to a crowd gathered to honor the late Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Biden, 83, made the remark during a eulogy at Chicago’s House of Hope, where he shared a lengthy personal story about growing up with a stutter. He told the audience that people with speech impediments are often dismissed as unintelligent, according to a full transcript published by CBS Chicago.
“Now, if I told you all earlier, when I was a kid, I had a cleft palate or club foot, none of you would have laughed, but it’s okay to laugh at stuttering,” Biden said. “It’s the one place where people think you’re stupid. Oh, really? I’m hell of a lot smarter than most of you.” (RELATED: What Has Joe Biden Been Up To?)
He followed with “all kidding aside, it makes you feel really small” before moving on.
Joe Biden just told the attendees at Jesse Jackson’s memorial service that they’re dumb
“I am a hell of a lot smarter than most of you.”pic.twitter.com/0lGmzCsWff
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 6, 2026
The former president also delivered a rambling passage about Nelson Mandela and the African continent, according to the CBS Chicago transcript. Biden told the crowd he once informed Jackson about plans to visit a man in South Africa before veering into a claim that Africa would become “the largest continent in the world” by 2050 in terms of population.
The disjointed remarks drew widespread mockery online. The X account Libs of TikTok shared the clip and wrote that Biden “just told the attendees at Jesse Jackson’s memorial service that they’re dumb.” “Does he know he’s at a funeral?” one user wrote. “That’s scary he thinks he’s smart at all,” another added.
Biden was not the only speaker who used the memorial as a platform to attack the current White House. He told mourners the Trump administration “doesn’t share any of the values that we have,” NBC News reported. Former President Barack Obama referenced “those in high office” and called the present moment difficult, while former Vice President Kamala Harris opened by saying she had “predicted a lot of what’s happening right now.”
Jackson died Feb. 17 at age 84 after a prolonged fight with progressive supranuclear palsy, as the Fox News reported. A protégé of Martin Luther King Jr., he built the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and launched two White House bids in the 1980s that reshaped Democratic primary politics.
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