President Donald Trump boasted on Thursday night about a cognitive test he took during a Walter Reed physical, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that doctors were “very surprised” that he “aced” it while calling on former Vice President Joe Biden to take the same test.
Calling in to close confidant Hannity’s primetime program, both the president and the Fox News star began openly questioning Biden’s mental fitness and suggesting he is suffering from cognitive decline.
After Hannity aired a montage of selectively edited clips to characterize Biden as senile, and Trump described the former vice president as “brainwashed,” the conservative host brought up Biden’s recent claim that he “can hardly wait” to test his cognitive capability against Trump’s.
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“Now he apparently says that he has many cognitive tests,” Hannity said. “He’s tested all the time, cognitively. Maybe he’ll release those records and maybe he’ll release his medical records.”
(For the record, Biden said he’s “been tested and I’m constantly tested,” and that all anyone has to do is “watch me,” suggesting he means that the real world tests him.)
Hannity wondered aloud if Biden has been trying to figure out a way to avoid debating the president, a recent right-wing talking point that has gained steam recently, prompting Trump to say “yes” before going on a tangent.
“But he meant the COVID tests. He didn’t mean cognitive. He meant COVID,” Trump declared.
After Hannity insisted Biden said “cognitive,” Trump continued to argue that the ex-veep meant coronavirus tests—Biden has said he hadn’t taken a COVID-19 test yet—but that Biden was “confused by the question and the words and everything else but he didn’t take a cognitive test because he couldn’t pass one.”
The president went on to say that he took a cognitive test “very recently” in order to prove to those questioning his mental acuity that he was “all there.” (It appears Trump is talking about the Montreal Cognitive Assessment he took during his 2018 physical exam, which he passed.)
“I proved I was all there because I aced it,” Trump bellowed. “I aced the test and he should take the same exact test. A very standard test.”
“I took it at Walter Reed, a medical center, in front of doctors, and they were very surprised,” he continued. “They said, that’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did. But he should take that same test.”
The president would go on to say that Biden “has been totally taken over” and it’s “because he doesn’t understand what’s going on” before once again claiming that Biden “wants to get out of the debates.”
Last month, the Biden campaign announced that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee would be participating in the three scheduled presidential debates this fall.
