Jon Stewart cut through all of President Trump’s boasting about his cognitive tests with one simple question.
The president has been talking up his cognitive tests in speeches and appearances. On Friday, Trump bragged at a press conference, “I took three cognitive tests. Aced all of them, by the way. ... I don’t think Obama could pass it.”
On Monday, Trump told reporters, “No president has ever taken a cognitive test except me. I’ve taken three of them.”
In his monologue on Monday, Stewart asked Trump simply, “Why do you think that is?”
“Why do you think that you’re the only president that that happens to?” Stewart continued. “That for some reason, every time you go to the doctor, which is a lot, the doctor is always like, ‘Hey, while you’re here...’”
Stewart jokingly described Trump as “a regular Stephen Hawking,” and accused him of lying about one of the cognitive test’s questions.
Trump recalled at his Friday press event, “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.’”
To explain his skepticism that Trump could handle such a question, Stewart showed a 2006 interview of Trump on The Howard Stern Show. Stern asked Trump, then 20 years younger, the simpler question of, “What is 17 times 6?”
Trump answered confidently, “It’s 11-12,” before later saying, “112.”
“It’s 102,” Stewart replied, “But somehow we’re supposed to believe that 20 years later you’ve turned into a genius.”
The cognitive tests that Trump has reportedly taken are the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a 30-minute test that’s meant to screen for signs of dementia.
The tests are not supposed to be difficult for a mentally healthy adult, and would not likely include a question as complicated as the one Trump described, according to publicly-available samples of the test.
Fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel once mocked Trump’s cognitive test boasting by taking the test himself on his show. Some of the test’s questions asked Kimmel to identify basic drawings of commonly-known animals.
Trump’s second term in office has been plagued by widespread concerns over his apparent mental and physical decline.
In October, former John Hopkins professor John Gartner told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump is displaying a “massive increase” in “clinical signs of dementia.”
Despite the media concerns over the president’s mental health, Trump has publicly toyed with the idea of staying in office for a third, even fourth term.
When talking about his controversial ballroom project on Monday, Trump said, “When I get out of office in, let’s say, eight or nine years from now, I’ll be able to use it myself.”
Trump is constitutionally limited to only two presidential terms, and cannot legally stay in office past January 2029.
