Donald Trump Makes ‘Super' Awkward Gaffe While Ranting About Iran
President Donald Trump was ridiculed online for a stormy slip-up during an exchange with a reporter aboard Air Force One on Tuesday.
Asked about concerns over possible Iranian sleeper cell attacks in the United States following his decision to bomb the country, Trump pivoted to slamming his predecessor, former President Joe Biden ― but referred to 'supercells' thunderstorms instead.
'Biden let a lot of supercells into the United States,' Trump fumed. 'He was an incompetent president. He had no idea what he was doing. It was gross incompetence. Among everything else, he let a lot of supercells in, many from Iran. But hopefully we'll take care of them. What Biden did to this country should never be forgotten.'
Trump: "Biden let a lot of super cells in, many from Iran. But hopefully we'll take care of them." (The term he was looking for is "sleeper cells") pic.twitter.com/RrdVa3zH6m
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 24, 2025
The gaffe predictably went viral:
Trump called sleeper cells, super cellsHe thinks he invented the words 'groceries' and 'equalize.'He called for world peace then posted a video to the tune of bomb IranBut he identified the elephant on a dementia test so I guess he's a god damn genius
— Kelly D 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱 (@KellDA) June 25, 2025
He can fix Super Cells with his Sharpie.
— wjmalik@noc.social (@wjmalik) June 24, 2025
Trump's brain is just wind, noise, and rotating nonsense.A super cell of disinformation.
— Nikos Unity (@nikosunity) June 24, 2025
Trump: "Biden let a lot of super cells in, many from Iran. But hopefully we'll take care of them." He's just so pathetic. pic.twitter.com/dYualRoEuO
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) June 24, 2025
Super cells? Like thunderstorms? Do I have to been on the lookout for twisters walking down the street now?
— Juice (@TheJuiceBoxGuy) June 24, 2025
A confused Trump refers to "super" cells instead of "sleeper" cells pic.twitter.com/JdkUMiPQ08
— FactPost (@factpostnews) June 24, 2025
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At the same time, he added, the college is 'complying with all directives issued by the President and Department of Defense and following Department of the Navy policy.' This language leaves Pauline and other civilian faculty at America's military schools facing a paradox: They are told that academic freedom still exists, but that their institutions are following directives from Hegseth that, at least on their face, seem aimed at ending academic freedom. In March, Pauline again sought clarity from college leaders. They were clearly anxious to appear compliant with the new political line. ('We don't want to end up on Fox News,' she said one administrator told her.) She was told her work was valued, but she didn't believe it. 'Talk is cheap,' she said. 'Actions matter.' She said she asked the provost point-blank: What if a faculty member has a book or an article coming out on some controversial topic? 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'The upshot,' according to her, was a message from the administration that boiled down to: We hope you can just suck it up and not need your integrity for your final year as the ethics chair. After that, she told me, her choices were clear. 'As they say in the military: Salute and execute—or resign.' Until then, she had 'hoped maybe people would still come to their senses.' The promises of seven years ago were gone; the institution now apparently expected her and other faculty to self-censor in the classroom and preemptively bowdlerize their own research. 'I don't do DEI work,' she said, 'but I do moral philosophy, and now I can't do it. I'd have to take out discussions of race and gender and not do philosophy as I think it should be done.' In April, she submitted a formal letter of resignation. Initially, she had no interest in saying anything publicly. Pauline is a native Montanan and single mom of two, and by nature not the type of person to engage in public food fights. (She used to joke with me when we were colleagues that I was the college's resident lightning rod, and she had no interest in taking over that job.) She's a philosopher who admires quiet stoicism, and she was resolved to employ it in her final months. But she also thought about what she owed her chair's namesake. 'Stockdale thought philosophy was important for officers. The Stockdale course was created so that officers would wrestle with moral obligations. He was a personal model of integrity.' Even so, she did not try to invoke him as a patron saint when she decided to resign. 'I'm not saying he would agree with the choice that I made,' she told me. 'But his model of moral integrity is part of the chair.' She kept her resignation private until early May, when a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Graham Parsons—another scholar who teaches ethics in a military school, and a friend of Pauline's—likewise decided to resign in protest and said that he would leave West Point after 13 years. Hegseth's changes 'prevent me from doing my job responsibly,' he wrote in The New York Times. 'I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.' Hegseth responded on X, sounding more like a smug internet troll than a concerned superior: 'You will not be missed Professor Parsons.' The episode changed Pauline's mind. She felt she owed her friends and colleagues whatever public support and solidarity she could offer them. Nor are she and Parsons alone. Tom McCarthy, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, recently resigned as chair of the history department rather than remove a paper from an upcoming symposium. And last month, a senior scholar at the Army War College, in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lee, also handed in her resignation, a decision she announced to her friends and followers on Bluesky. Jason Dempsey: Hegseth has all the wrong enemies Lee told me in an email that she'd been thinking of leaving after Trump was elected, because it was apparent to her that the Trump administration was 'going to try and politicize the military and use military assets/personnel to suppress democratic rights,' and that academic freedom in military schools was soon to 'become untenable.' Like Pauline, Lee felt like she was at a dead end: 'To speak from within the institution itself will also do more harm than good. So to dissent, I have little choice but to leave,' she said in a farewell letter to her colleagues in April. I asked Pauline what she thinks might have happened if she had decided to stay and just tough it out from the inside. She 'absolutely' thinks she'd have been fired at some point, and she didn't want such a firing 'to be part of the legacy of the Stockdale Chair.' But then I asked her if by resigning, she was giving people in the Trump administration, such as Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought—who once said that his goal was to make federal workers feel 'trauma' to the point where they will quit their jobs—exactly what they want: Americans leaving federal service. She didn't care. 'When you make a moral decision, there are always costs.' She dismissed what people like Vought want or think. 'I'm not accountable to him. I'm accountable to the Lord, to my father, to my legacy, to my children, to my profession, to members of the military-ethics community. So I decided that I needed to resign. Not that it would change anyone's mind, but to say: This is not okay. That is my message.' At the end of our discussion, I asked an uncomfortable question I'd been avoiding. Pauline, I know, is only in her mid-50s, in mid-career, and too young simply to retire. She has raised two sons who will soon enter young adulthood. I asked her if she was worried about her future. 'Sure,' she said. 'But at the end of the day, as we say in Montana, sometimes you just have to saddle up and ride scared.'
