Trump Continues To Reassure Himself (And His Cult) That He Is Not Slowly Losing His Mind
Trump Continues To Reassure Himself (And His Cult) That He Is Not Slowly Losing His Mind
Nearly six years after taking a cognitive test used to detect signs of dementia, the self-described "very stable genius" is still publicly bragging he passed the test.
Heather Digby Parton, Salon, September 11, 2023
On Sunday night, Donald Trump threw down the gauntlet . . . post[ing] this cri de guerre on [Troth Senchal]:
“In a phony and probably rigged Wall Street Journal poll, coming out of nowhere to soften the mental incompetence blow that is so obvious with Crooked Joe Biden, they ask about my age and mentality. Where did that come from? A few years ago I was the only one to agree to a mental acuity test, & ACED IT. Now that the Globalists at Fox & the WSJ have failed to push their 3rd tier candidate to success, they do this. Well, I hereby challenge Rupert Murdoch & Sons, Biden, WSJ heads, to acuity tests!”
He added:
“I will name the place and the test, and it will be a tough one. Nobody will come even close to me! We can also throw some physical activity into it. I just won the Senior Club Championship at a big golf club, with many very good players. To do so you need strength, accuracy, touch and, above all, mental toughness. Ask Bret Baier (Fox), a very good golfer. The Wall Street Journal & Fox are damaged goods after their failed DeSanctimonious push & stupid $780,000,000 "settlement." MORONS!!!”
That’s just a little bit over the top even for him, don’t you think? . . .
Trump’s own pollster was a partner in the poll so he should probably take it up with him. And despite the fact that he’s 77 years old and would be 78 when he re-assumes the presidency should he win in 2024, he seems to think that’s off limits because he “aced” the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test given to him some years ago by his favorite White House doctor Ronny Jackson.
The test is designed to track cognitive changes over time. It’s not an “acuity” test or an IQ test but Trump has gone back to it again and again as proof of his mental fitness. . . .
No normal person would make such a big deal out of that test because it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that it’s just a memory test that many elderly people take to see if they may have signs of dementia. . . .
This incessant reminder that he was able to take this very simple test and that all the doctors were shocked because nobody ever does that well is just ... pathetic. And it’s very telling. . . .
He knows that he’s not all that bright and it drives him crazy. Back in July of 2022 he told his rally crowd:
“I said ‘Ronnie, I don't like when people call me stupid. I have great heritage, an uncle who was a great, great genius, a father who was a genius, they’re all geniuses, we had a lot of geniuses. I don’t like being called stupid. Is there a test I can take to prove to these radical left maniacs that I’m much smarter than them?’”
He’s worried. He’s been worried for years. He had heard talk that people might want to remove him for “incapacitation” and gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation in which he claimed that “they” were trying to get him with an “Article 5.” . . .
He’s terrified of developing Alzheimer’s disease because his father had it. . . . According to his niece Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, Trump derided his father when he was ill with Alzheimer’s — and took full advantage of it by coercing him into changing the will in Donald’s favor. . . .
It’s quite obvious that Trump is clinging to that test as a way to reassure himself that he’s not impaired. But, of course, he is, and on some level he knows it. . . .
As his niece Mary Trump said, “his talking about the dementia test the way he’s talking about it is failing the dementia test.” And he fails it again every time he talks about it. He just can’t seem to stop himself.
Early in Trump’s presidency, Steve Bannon “believed Trump was suffering from early stage dementia and that there was a real possibility he would be removed from office by the 25th amendment, where the cabinet could vote that the president was no longer mentally capable of carrying out his duties.”
My previous posts on this subject:
July 10, 2020
Trump Brags That Doctors Were Surprised He Passed A Dementia Screening Test
Donald Trump boasted that doctors were surprised when he passed a cognitive test used to screen for dementia. (That’s not the humblebrag he thinks it is.)
“I actually took one very recently when I was — when the radical left was saying is he all there, is he all there? I proved I was all there because I aced it. I aced the test and he [Joe Biden] 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. They said, that’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you did.”
In the last month, Donald Trump has also publicly bragged about drinking a glass of water with one hand. And his press secretary has insisted to reporters that Trump "does read". ... Which is all completely normal.
Left unsaid was why Trump was given the test in the first place.
July 1, 2021
July 2021: Trump Is Still Bragging About How "We" Passed A Cognitive Test For Dementia 3½ Years Ago, In January 2018 (Hannity Exclaims "Wow!" And The Crowd Cheers)
DoctorofElectricity (@ChiefofECT): “He’s so damn proud of passing that dementia test. It's like being proud of having a heartbeat or a body temperature. All normal people would pass that test.”
In July 2020, Donald Trump bragged about “acing” the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (a 10-minute test designed to detect the early onset of dementia) to Fox’s Chris Wallace in a televised interview.
Wallace responded: “Well, it’s not the hardest test. They have a picture and it says, ‘What’s that?’ And it’s an elephant.” Trump got annoyed. “Yes, the first few questions are easy, but I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. . . . They get very hard, the last five questions.”
For the record, the final five questions require identifying the current month, year, and day, where the person is at the moment, and what city he or she is currently in. These are the “very hard” questions Trump was referring to.
Although the fact that Trump took the test became infamous in 2020 (when he boasted to the world about his recall of five words (“person, woman, man, camera, TV”), the Washington Post reported that Trump was first given the test on January 12, 2018.Trump has brought up this test repeatedly and I’m always dumbfounded each time he does. He has brought it up twice in the last week, more than four years after he identified a picture of a camel and tapped his hand every time the administrator, while reading a list of letters, said the letter A. This is the test.
It has now been more than 5½ years — and Trump is still bragging — in public, where he expects to receive cheers — about knowing the correct answers to what he admitted were “very difficult” questions, such as what year it is.