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In case you missed the video:
Last summer Trump was bragging about “acing” a standard cognitive test used to identify signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s:
A curious boast: Trump brags about 'acing' a cognitive test
Why would Trump's doctors be "very surprised" that he fared well on a cognitive test that most healthy adults could pass easily?
I suppose he considers this to be one of his greatest hits so he’s using this brag again to disparage President Biden:
Trump: Biden Would Not Pass A Cognitive Test, "A Lot Of People Are Suggesting That He Do That"
Of course Trump uses various versions of “a lot of people” to indicate that something must be true. Read, for example “Many people are saying – that Trump drives conspiracies and gossip” in CNN from way back in 2016. Needless to say, one sign of high intelligence is critical thinking ability which means that a person doesn’t rely on evidence from biased information (see confirmation bias) to decide if something is true.
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Since Trump is reprising this absurd and one might suggest delusional claim I thought I’d update and repost my story from when he first bragged about the results of the MoCA cognitive assessment he took.
“So Shower Heads, You Take a Shower, the Water Doesn’t Come Out. You Wanna Wash Your Hands, the Water Doesn’t Come Out…Dishwashers, You Didn’t Have Any Water…In Most Places of the Country, Water Is Not a Problem. They Don’t Know What Do With It. It’s Called Rain.” Donald J. Trump
This may go down in history as one of the most ridiculous statements a president has ever made to tout his accomplishments after three and a half years in office.
Trump apparently equates brain size with a high IQ. See for example President Trump cites China’s respect for his ‘very, very large brain’ from 2018.
Trump also said he’s a stable genius, I suppose differentiating himself from geniuses who were unstable.
“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” the President continued. “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!”
After his tweets Saturday morning, Trump told reporters at Camp David that (author Michael) Wolff is a “fraud” who doesn’t know him.
“I went to the best colleges, or college,” he told reporters. “I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out and made billions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people, went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard, ran for President one time and won. Then I hear this guy that doesn’t know me at all, by the way, didn’t interview me, said he interviewed me for three hours in the White House. Didn’t exist, it’s in his imagination.” From CNN Jan. 2018.
From July 2020 USA Today
President Donald Trump has taken up the strategy of attacking former Vice President Joe Biden's mental status, while defending his own, during the 2020 election, and in a new round of criticisms is touting his results of a standard cognitive functioning test.
In a contentious interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace that aired Sunday, Trump again claimed he got a perfect score on a test of his cognitive ability and said that former Biden "could not answer those questions."
Wallace cited a recent Fox poll of voters that found Biden has a slight edge over Trump when it comes to perceived mental soundness for presidency.
"Let's take a test right now. Let's go down, Joe and I will take a test. Let him take the same test that I took," Trump said.
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"Well it's not the hardest test. There's a picture and it says, 'What's that?' And it's an elephant," Wallace said to Trump.
"No, no, no," Trump said. "See, that's all misrepresentation."
Trump went on to say that while the first few questions are easy, the last five are "very hard." "I'll bet you couldn't even answer the last five questions," he said.
Here’s what the one person, Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, who can claim to be the top expert on the test had to say. He designed the test (Market Watch):
“This is not an IQ test or the level of how a person is extremely skilled or not,” Nasreddine agreed in a call with MarketWatch. “The test is supposed to help physicians detect early signs of Alzheimer’s, and it became very popular because it was a short test, and very sensitive for early impairment.”
More pointedly, Market Watch included what a psychologist and a doctor who use the test tweeted:
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Trump and the MoCA test is really old news. On Jan. 17, 2018 I wrote about the possibility Trump cheated when he first took the test. After that news came out apparently so many people were trying to look at the website for the test that below is what came up when you tried to find it online.
This is the gist of what I wrote:
If I was a Trump advisor and wanted to help him put aside the rampant speculation about his being in the early stages of dementia, I would have suggested has ask to be tested during his physical.
Then I would check online to determine which were the most likely tests would be used. The MoCA is one of two commonly used tests, the other being the Mini–Mental State Examination (MMSE).
I would have the president practice both tests, hoping he’d be given the MoCA because the examiner is allowed the flexibility to customize some of the questions on the MMSE (the naming objects questions for example).
Assuming that the doctor didn’t customize the MoCA, Trump could have taken the test repeatedly until he could answer all the questions.
I would have suggested Trump get a couple of questions wrong to avoid suspicion, but of course he would ignore this advice wanting to brag about getting 30 out of 30 right.
The matter of judging just how intelligent Trump really is has been addressed in articles since he began to make inflated claims about his brilliance. Recently The New Republic published He Is Even Dumber Than We Thought — Four years in office have only convinced more Americans that the Trump might not be a stable genius.
This article begins:
A Washington Post–ABC News poll taken the last week of May 2020 asked Americans, “Do you think Trump has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president?” Fifty-two percent of respondents said no, with only 46 percent saying yes.
One might see this solid majority response as the weary, off-the-cuff judgment of an American public worn down by Trump’s barrage of outlandish claims about coronavirus treatments, or fantasized accounts of legions of violent antifa leaders orchestrating the present nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd. (Indeed, since that poll’s release, it was reported that Trump mistakenly tried to register to vote in his newly adopted home state of Florida using an out-of-state address.) But in truth, this was far from the first poll to find that a substantial number of Americans see Trump as not very bright. An Economist/YouGov poll in 2019 asked, “Compared to other presidents since World War II, would you say that Trump is more or less intelligent?” Forty-seven percent said that he is less intelligent, 22 percent said he has about the same intelligence, and just 21 percent thought he is more intelligent.
The article ends with a 2017 quote from Erick Erickson, a former CEO of the popular rightwing Redstate.com website from an OpEd he wrote in The Washington Post.
“The president exudes incompetence and instability. Divulging classified information to the Russians through bragging; undermining his staff’s defense of his conduct through inane tweets; even reportedly asking the FBI director to suspend an investigation of a former adviser—all these strike me not so much as malicious but as the ignorant actions of an overwhelmed man. Republicans excuse this behavior as Trump being Trump, but that will only embolden voters who seek greater accountability to choose further change over stability. The sad reality is that the greatest defense of the president available at this point is one his team could never give on the record: He is an idiot who does not know any better.”
and the New Republic concludes:
And that’s the assessment of an ideological fellow traveler; as the polling results and unvarnished assessments of global diplomats suggest that the president is not merely “overwhelmed” and that the idiot defense for his chronic incompetence and misconduct is more than a simply rhetorical tactic. With the Trump presidency, H.L. Mencken’s 1920 prediction that one day the White House “will be adorned by a downright moron” has now come true.
Trump has excelled as a performer for his base but they are walking out of his rallies early so this suggests that some of them are tired of his same old shtick. Yesterday Fox News cut off Trump after he derailed 'border' press conference with an election rant. He needs fresh new material.
