President Donald Trump rambled about his ability to correctly identify animals as he touted his mental acuity on Friday, while suggesting his own supporters would not pass such a test.
The president, 79, has repeatedly bragged about having taken three cognitive tests, which he claims he aced. But during his rant at The Villages, Florida—the world’s largest retirement community—Trump shared a fresh example of what his test included.
“You know, the first question is very easy. It’s a lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. They say, ‘Which one is the bear?’” Trump said. “And everybody says ‘Oooooh.’ Thirty questions. Everyone says, very standard. It’s a very standard test, but very tough around those last 10 questions.”
Trump was supposed to be promoting how his administration has helped improve the lives of seniors, but the president strayed far from his prepared script almost immediately after taking the stage.
He launched into a several-minute rant about his cognitive ability after he went on the attack against California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The Democratic governor has been opening up about his struggles with dyslexia, but Trump claimed Newsom said he was “incompetent.”
“We should give him a cognitive test. I took three of them. Aced all of them, by the way,” Trump rambled. “I’m the only president to take a cognitive test, because I don’t think Obama could pass it. I don’t.”
“Didn’t he get into Harvard with a C average? I don’t know,” Trump said of the former president who went to Harvard Law School. “I don’t think he could pass it. I don’t think—well, Biden—give me a break."
After sharing the animal example, Trump bragged that he was smarter than his supporters in the room watching him speak.
“I’m in a room of brilliant people, but a lot of you wouldn’t have been able to answer those 10 questions,” the president declared. “And when I got the score in the test, the doctor said, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen—’.”
But the president didn’t finish his thought, cutting himself off to explain why he even took the tests in the first place.
“You have five doctors lined up. They’re all over the place. I said, ‘Should I take it?’ You know, I’ve had different phases,” Trump said. “They’ve said, ‘He’s a mad genius.’ I didn’t mind that too much. Then they said, ‘He’s a horrible human being.’ I don’t like that much. Then they said, ‘He’s really not a smart person at all.’ I really hated that, so I took a cognitive test.”
After that, the president even recounted on stage how he debated taking the cognitive test during his first term with then-White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, who is now a GOP congressman.
“He had a whole team of doctors at Walter Reed, a great place. I said, ‘So should I do it?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s a tough exam, actually. You know, those last 20 questions, they get tough. A lot of people can’t do them.’ I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’” Trump recalled.
The president then disparaged Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, claiming that if he had not done well on the test, it would have leaked.
“He said, ‘Well, if you do it, they’re going to find out because… it’s a military hospital. If you do badly, they’re going to find out, and it won’t be pleasant,’” Trump claimed Jackson told him. “I said, ‘Well, I do well on things, so let’s do it.’ And I got, I got everyone right, and these are tough questions.”
While the president claims to have taken three cognitive tests in office, the detailed results have not been released.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin has called for Trump to take another cognitive test and have the results publicly released following the president’s recent threatening posts about Iran.
Raskin has also been demanding that Trump’s current doctor, White House physician Sean Barbabella, be made available to answer lawmakers’ questions about the president’s health under oath.
Trump’s rambling about taking the cognitive test on Friday was similar to when he bragged about taking a test in 2020, which he said assessed his mental acuity, but the Montreal Cognitive Assessment is supposed to detect signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Trump went on Fox News at the time, where he bragged about being able to remember words in the right order: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” He declared his ability was “amazing.”
On Friday, the president shared another example of what he claimed was on the test that he said he aced.
“You know, they say, ‘Take a number, any number,’ OK, I’ll take 99, ‘Multiply times nine,’ OK, ‘Divide it by three,’ good, ’Add 4,293.’ That’s good. ‘Divide by two. Subtract 93. Divide by nine. What is your answer?’” Trump reenacted. “Now, they go a little slower than that, but not much. I don’t want to waste a lot of time, but there aren’t a lot of people that get it right. I got it right.”
The crowd in the room cheered for the president, who did not actually share the answer to his example equation. He instead claimed it was actually “longer and more complex than that.”
Trump went on to promise that he is “smart,” but also argued that he has “common sense.”
“I think anybody running for president or vice president should be forced to take a cognitive examination,” Trump declared, so that the U.S. would not get stuck with a “man who’s a moron.”
It was not the first time this week that the president boasted about acing a cognitive test. His rant on Friday afternoon came a day after he also posted on Truth Social about how presidential candidates should be required to take such exams.
In her 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, Trump’s niece Mary claimed that Donald paid “a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him”.
