(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump continues to brag and exaggerate about acing a cognitive test as his Republican challenger Nikki Haley highlights his recent stumbles on the trail to suggest he’s getting “confused” as he gets older.
Defending himself, Trump has repeatedly appeared to allude to taking the Montreal Cognitive Assessment while he was in the White House and afterward.
“There’s only about 2% in this room can do it, but I did it. I did it very easily,” Trump said about his results on the test at an event in Las Vegas over the weekend. “But I got mocked — they said, ‘Oh, that’s so easy.’ It’s not easy. It’s not easy. Go home and try doing it.”
Trump was seemingly referring to taking the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is not a test of intelligence and which doctors use to uncover early signs of cognitive impairment such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
The test involves various questions like identifying animals, recalling a list from memory and drawing a given time on a clock.
Trump took one as part of a physical exam in 2018, while he was president, ABC News previously reported.
He has been bragging about his results of the exam since at least the 2020 presidential campaign; however, at Saturday’s rally in Nevada he also claimed he recently took a test again and that there was a difficult question involving math.
The only math question on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment involves counting backwards from the number 100 in increments of seven.
But that’s not what Trump described. “Multiply 4,733, multiply times seven, divide — without paper and pencil by the way — divide it by four, add up another 37 and a half, point five,” he said this weekend, remembering the question. “I remember that. What’s your number? How many people in this room could do it? Not too many.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump usually brings up his cognitive testing as part of his stump speech questioning Joe Biden’s mental and physical fitness, mocking the sitting president’s speech or movements. (Biden has acknowledged concerns about his age — at 81, he’s four years older than Trump — but also said his record proves his fitness.)
On Biden’s 81st birthday, Trump released a letter from his doctor regarding a physical exam he had taken which, according to the letter, reported his cognitive exams as “exceptional.”
Now, as the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination comes down to two people, Haley is increasingly attempting to make Trump’s age and fitness a central focal point, too.
Trump continues to make some stumbles on the trail, including mixing up Nancy Pelosi for Haley as he was talking about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack at a campaign rally in Concord, New Hampshire, earlier this month.
“He’s not what he was in 2016. He has declined. That’s a fact,” Haley said about Trump during an appearance on CBS on Tuesday.
“Are we really in this country going to have two 80-year-olds running for president? It is a fact that when you are their age, you have mental decline,” Haley said.
Trump has backed mental aptitude or cognitive tests for people running for office, which Haley has proposed, but said he’s not as old as she suggests.
“She talks about, ‘Yeah, we don’t need 80 year old.’ Well, I don’t mind being 80 — but I’m 77. That’s a big difference,” he joked at a campaign stop earlier this month.
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