“I DON’T want a stupid person being president.”
United States President Donald Trump was in a bragging mood during a televised Cabinet meeting late this month, where he attacked the Democratic frontrunner for the presidential nomination, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for being dyslexic.
“I’m the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times,” he said as the sycophants sitting around him discussed the illegal and disastrous Middle East war that he started and that is upending economies all around the world.
“It’s actually a very hard test for a lot of people. It wasn’t hard for me, but it’s a cognitive test. It starts off with an easy question... And by the time you get to the middle, it gets tougher. By the time you get to the end, very few people can answer those questions.
“They get very tough mathematical equations and things. I took it three times.
“I aced it all three times in front of numerous doctors that I have no idea who they are. And I was told when I went in, they said... well, if you take it, you know, it’s Walter Reed. It’s essentially a public hospital. And if you do badly, it’s probably going to get out, but I aced it. I got them all right.
“And one doctor said, I’ve never seen anybody get them all right. I’ve been doing the test for 20 years.”
Suitably impressed, I downloaded the cognitive test, called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MOCA. You can see for yourself here: https://championsforhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/MOCA-8.1.8.2-English.pdf
So, what did I find?
The 30-point 10-minute test is not an IQ test or a measure of superior intelligence, as Trump would have us believe. It is actually a screening tool used to detect mild cognitive impairment or early signs of dementia. This begs the question: Why was Trump asked to take the test three times?
The questions in this “very hard test” include being able to draw the face of a clock with the numbers in the right place and the hands pointing to “Ten past eleven.” Someone taking the test will also be asked to identify drawings of a lion, a rhino and a camel. There’s a memory test, too, where the person being tested will be asked to repeat five words in the sequence in which they were read to him.
Difficult questions indeed.
The “very tough mathematical equations” is actually one question: serially subtract seven, starting at 100, for five times.
Trump brags that he scored 30 of 30 points — but that wouldn’t make him particularly intelligent.
It is generally true that getting a perfect score is relatively uncommon, even for people without any cognitive impairment, because it is also a memory and stress test under time pressure (Name maximum number of words in one minute that begin with the letter “F.”) A score of 26 or higher merely indicates that a person is mentally “normal” — not particularly intelligent.
If Trump’s indeed “aced” the cognitive test, that would certainly call into question the accuracy of the diagnostic tool. After all, there are so many examples of Trump’s growing cognitive weakness. In an increasing number of instances, he has confused names of world leaders, business leaders and cities. At rallies, his digressions have become more frequent and less coherent. Comedians, meanwhile, have had a heyday poking fun at his phonemic paraphasia, or word salad, moments when he starts a word but finishes it with a nonexistent syllable.
And then again, what person in his right mind would start a war in the Middle East with no clear-cut objectives, kill thousands of innocent civilians, leave his allies unprepared for the inevitable retribution and wreak havoc on the global economy?
The more likely explanation is that Trump didn’t ace the cognitive test after all. The test he needs is a lie detector test — one that he simply cannot ace.
