President Donald Trump’s dubious “cognitive test” claims have been given a brutal reality check.
Users on X have slapped community notes on viral clips of the 79-year-old president bizarrely raving about his performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which he continues to wrongly equate to an IQ or aptitude test.
“I’m the only president that ever took a cognitive test,” Trump told his Cabinet during a meeting in which he at times struggled to keep his eyes open on Thursday. “I took it three times. It’s actually a very hard test for a lot of people. It wasn’t hard for me.”
His ramble continued, unchecked by his table of sycophants, “It’s a cognitive test. It starts off with an easy question. And by the time you get to the middle, it gets tougher. By the time you get to the end, very few people can answer those questions. They get very tough mathematical equations and things. I took it three times. I aced it all three times in front of numerous doctors that I have no idea who they are.”
Trump went on to claim that a doctor told him he is the first person to complete the assessment without missing a single question in his 20 years of administering it.
Trump has previously claimed to have aced the test, including back in 2020 during an interview with Fox News.
“It’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy. And that’s not an easy question. In other words, they ask it to you, they give you five names and you have to repeat ’em. And that’s OK. If you repeat ’em out of order, it’s OK, but, you know, it’s not as good,” he said. “But when you go back about 20, 25 minutes later and they say go back to that—they don’t tell you this—‘Go back to that question and repeat ’em, can you do it?’ And you go: ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’”
Fact checks on X quickly followed.
“The MoCA test Trump refers to is a 10-minute screening tool for mild cognitive impairment that people with normal cognition easily pass,” a community note read. “It includes basic tasks like serial subtraction (100-7 repeatedly), not complex mathematical equations.”
As first noted by Mediaite, Trump was also dealt a dose of reality by Grok—Elon Musk’s AI chatbot that users often use as a real-time fact checker on X.
“The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a quick 10-15 min clinical screening tool for mild cognitive impairment in older adults,” Grok wrote. “It begins with easy tasks (naming animals, drawing a clock) then adds attention/memory items like serial 7s subtraction from 100—not complex equations.”
It continued, “Trump first took it in 2018 during his annual physical amid public questions about his mental fitness (he scored 30/30). He’s repeated it voluntarily during later exams (three times total per his recent statements) to demonstrate and emphasize passing each time.”
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was former Vice President Dick Cheney’s cardiologist during the George W. Bush administration, said he is shocked Trump’s advisers are not imploring him to stop bragging about such an easy assessment, which can be as simple as drawing hands on a clock and identifying animals.
“If I were one of the president’s advisers, I would beg him to stop bragging about doing well on a dementia screening tool which requires the patient to identify a camel and subtract 7 from 100,” he posted on X.
The Daily Beast had led the way in covering both Trump’s slipping cognitive and physical state during his second term, including his perennial hand bruises, inability to walk in a straight line, his severely swollen ankles, and, perhaps most concerning, his struggles staying awake.
