Jimmy Kimmel proved once and for all how easy it was for President Donald Trump to pass the cognitive exam he took at Walter Reed Medical Center.
In his Monday night monologue, Kimmel showed a Truth Social post from Trump bragging about having aced his “Cognitive Examination, which no other President, or previous Vice President, was willing to take.”
“In the interest of fairness, and also to get a sense of what he keeps babbling about, we got in touch with a doctor who gives this test regularly, these cognitive exams,” Kimmel explained. “And I asked her to administer one to me.”
Kimmel explained, “This is the official exam administered by a medical professional. I did not see the questions ahead of time. And I’m willing to release the full unedited version if necessary.”
“With that said, let’s find out just how difficult this big, beautiful test is,” Kimmel said, “and how my brain stacks up against our stable genius president’s.”
Kimmel played a 4-minute clip of himself taking the real cognitive exam that Trump had described as “not easy.”
The test had Kimmel connect some dots, name some words that start with “f,” and correctly identify basic drawings of a lion, a rhino, and a camel.
“I just saw Zootopia, so I know all the answers," Kimmel jokingly bragged upon acing the animal section.
The medical professional tallied up Kimmel’s points and told him he got a “perfect score.”
Kimmel replied, “So I can be president.”
The segment comes after months of Kimmel trolling Trump over his cognitive bragging. Kimmel has repeatedly argued that passing a test designed to detect cognitive impairment is a low bar for a president to clear.
In October 2025, Kimmel defended Democratic representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett when Trump claimed they wouldn’t be able to pass the test themselves.
Kimmel invited Crockett to a video interview on his show and jokingly quizzed her with a few questions from the test. When Crockett correctly identified a drawing of an elephant, Kimmel joked, “Wow, you’re gonna crush this.”
On various occasions since first running for office in 2016, he’s dubbed himself “a very stable genius” who’s “by far stabler and more geniuser than any of them,” as well as “like, really smart.”
He’s equally torn into his detractors for being “dumb as a rock” and questioned his political opponents’ IQ.
While these terms of political engagement may have proven a boon to him running against Joe Biden at a time when the Democratic president’s mental decline was only too painfully on display, the MAGA leader’s fixation with cognitive aptitude and agility has increasingly come back to haunt him since assuming office for the second time last January.
The months since have witnessed a seemingly endless and ever more frequent series of highly public flubs, which have included confusing the names of countries, opponents and foreign leaders, as well as an increased incidence of repetitive speech and memory lapses.
Clinical psychologists have previously shared with the Daily Beast how these and other gaffes may very well represent “clinical signs of dementia,” which have in turn exacerbated what’s perceived as an underlying malignant personality disorder.
“Whatever personality issues or problems [people with dementia] have begin to deteriorate and they become even more crude, disorganized, aggressive, confused versions of that personality disorder,” Dr. John Gartner, a former professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, told The Daily Beast Podcast in November.
