Ever wonder how high an IQ you must have if Donald Trump “aced” his IQ tests? It turns out, our 79-year-old president can answer nursery-level questions perfectly. And it was a cognitive decline test, not an IQ test.
Trump has been carrying his cognitive test results like a gold medal for over five years now. Most recently, after he underwent an MRI, he kept reiterating that it wasn’t for his brain, since he “aced” cognitive tests. But given his day-to-day statements and behavior, he sure couldn’t have scored an Einstein IQ level. So, what test did he pass “with flying colors” exactly?
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a.k.a the MoCA test
A little bit of digging, and anyone can find out exactly what test Trump keeps bragging about. And given how proud he is to have passed them, one cannot help but spare the time to do that digging. But once you do, you’d wish you didn’t.
The test most commonly prescribed for presidents is the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is used to detect early cognitive decline associated with ageing. It’s a short, 10-minute assessment designed to identify signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s. But you can guess how high a score Trump must’ve gotten when he referred to the MoCA as an “IQ test” instead. Not to mention, he called it “very hard.”
A few weeks ago, on October 27, Trump spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One and claimed that his political opponents could never beat him on those tests. He singled out Jasmine Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez, and said:
The first couple questions are easy: a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about five or six and then when you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.” (via AOL)
What does the MoCA test ask?
In one short sentence, the MoCA asks nursery-level questions to grown adults. On multiple occasions, Trump has claimed to have received “the highest score” on the test. Which would’ve been an achievement if he were 7, not 79.
Questions on the test include identifying animals based on printed figures, drawing a clock showing a specific time, drawing shapes, serial subtraction, recalling words in order, and more. In fact, back in 2020, Trump himself revealed one of the recall questions, bragging that “it was easy” for him.
It’s like you’ll go: Person, woman, man, camera, TV. So they say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. So it’s person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ ‘OK, that’s very good. If you get it in order, you get extra points.’ They say nobody gets it in order, it’s actually not that easy. But for me it was easy. And that’s not an easy question.
So, any individual with a healthy mind would get “every answer right” just like the president. However, the fact that getting a perfect score on such a cognitive test makes Trump think he’s a genius proves he is definitely not one. Most recently, he mentioned his achievement in the test for the nth time, saying:
I took my physical. I got all As. Everything. But they said to me, ‘would you like to take a cognitive test?’ I said, ‘Is it hard?’ They said, ‘yes.’ I said, ‘I’m a very smart person.’ Who was the last president to take one? No president has ever agreed to take one… I aced it. (via Independent)
But people are unfazed now. Because nobody needs a cognitive test result to judge where Trump stands. Just recently, he spammed over 160 posts and re-posts on his Truth Social at midnight. He is quite frequently seen repeating his statements, and also keeps dozing off during public appearances. So, even if he aces a 10-minute test asking him to identify a lion, nobody frankly cares.
