People Are Absolutely Losing It After Trump Said He Got The “Highest Mark” On His Cognitive Exam
Last week, Donald Trump underwent his first publicly released physical examination of his second term, shared in a memo from Trump's doctor.
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The exam, which clocks Trump in at 6'3″ and 224 lbs, and cites “frequent victories in golf events” as evidence of his “active lifestyle,” states the president “exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health.”
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As part of the evaluation, Trump again took a cognitive test, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). It's a brief screening tool used for dementia, which asks test-takers to complete simple tasks like drawing a clock and repeating a string of words back. A score of 25 or lower (out of 30) would signal cognitive impairment.
According to his doctor's memo, Trump scored a perfect 30 out of 30 — and unsurprisingly, he's made sure the public doesn't forget it (never mind that the questions ask things like naming animals and remembering a few words).
“I took my cognitive exam as part of my physical exam, and I got the highest mark,” Trump said at an event in the Oval Office. “One of the doctors said, ‘Sir, I've never seen anybody get that kind of — that was the highest mark,'” he claimed.
After boasting that neither Biden nor Obama had taken the test, unlike himself, Trump said, “I've actually taken them three times already. I like taking them, 'cause they're not too tough for me to take.”
Well, as plenty of people have pointed out, they’re not supposed to be. The MoCA isn’t designed to challenge the average adult brain — it’s meant to screen for cognitive decline.
“The point of a cognitive exam is to check if your mental faculties are declining. There's no ‘highest marks' like it's a school test. You're either declining or you're not. And something tells me Trump is declining if he's conflating a cognitive exam with a math final,” one person wrote on X.
“'Sir, this was the highest mark ever!!! You were the first one in history to correctly identify a giraffe and draw a clock!!'” someone else joked.
“Why is he acting like the MOCA is the MCAT?” another asked.
“He still thinks cognitive tests are intelligence tests,” someone else said.
“It’s still insane that someone can talk like this and be believed in any capacity,” another wrote.
This isn't the first time Trump has seemingly mistaken his cognitive exam for a high-stakes intelligence test. He similarly took the test in 2018 and, in a 2020 Fox News interview, claimed the test started off “very easy” but ended with questions that were “much more difficult.”
As proof of this difficulty, he recalled being asked to remember and repeat five words — once immediately, and again 10 to 20 minutes later. Thus, the now-infamous phrase was born: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”
After reciting the words, Trump told Fox News, “They say, ‘That's amazing. How did you do that?' I do it because I have, like, a good memory, because I'm cognitively there.” In the same 2020 interview, he also claimed, “They said nobody gets [the words] in order. It's actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy.”
Welp, I don't know about you, but I'm having déjà vu. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. It's all coming back to me. Maybe we really do have a modern-day Einstein as president.
