President Donald Trump has spent months bragging about acing cognitive tests, but one psychologist gives his view on why he keeps having these medical exams.
Dr. John Gartner, speaking to The Daily Beast, argued that repeated Montreal Cognitive Assessments, often referred to as the MoCA, look less like a one-time screening and more like ongoing tracking. In his view, the frequency is the tell.
“You know, he kind of gave the game away again, as he often does,” Gartner said, pointing to Trump’s habit of turning routine medical details into public chest-thumping. “You could maybe justify giving someone the MoCA once, just on their age, just as part of a physical. If you’re giving it to him three times, that means you’re not assessing dementia. That means you’re monitoring dementia.”
Trump has repeatedly brought up the test while talking to reporters, using it as proof of brilliance rather than a basic cognitive screen. In April, he said he “got every answer right” on the cognitive test. He returned to the topic again in October, calling it a “very hard” test and claiming “a low IQ person” would not be able to pass.
He also used it as an opportunity to go after his favourite targets on the left.
“They have Jasmine Crockett, a low IQ person. AOC is low IQ. You give her an IQ test, have her pass, like, the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed.”
“I took– Those are very hard– They’re really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way, but they’re cognitive tests. Let AOC go against Trump. Let Jasmine go against Trump. I don’t think Jasmine– 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.”
Gartner’s interpretation suggest that Trump is trying hard to deflect from the real issue as he believes the repeat testing suggests doctors are not trying to detect a problem but rather, they are checking whether an existing one is getting worse.
“Because if you keep feeling like, no, he’s still got the symptoms, we’ve got to see how bad he’s doing now, we’ve got to check again, see how bad he’s doing now, I think they’re giving him cognitive tests and M.R.I.s every six months to monitor the progress of his dementia, and/or strokes,” Gartner claimed.
The psychologist also spoke about how Trump has changed before our very eyes and his shift in tone isn’t the occasional gaffe. Gartner argued that people should be evaluated against their own baseline, not against a generic standard.
“We have to judge people against their own baseline, and if somebody doubles their rate of speed, that’s a mental status change of some kind,” he said.
Trump’s health has been a trending topic since he took office for his second term, as it has become hard to notice that his cognitive function is a cause for concern. But as Trump has always done, he hits back hard at any suggestion that his health is beyond excellent. His repeated references to the MoCA have become part of that routine, using it as proof that he is as sharp as he has ever been.
Per the psychologist, one test can be brushed off as age-related screening, but three, he says, is an undeniable pattern. And if the tests are being repeated to track change over time, that would suggest the White House is watching for movement in the wrong direction, not searching in the dark.
