President Donald Trump points to his brain (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
This July will mark the six-year anniversary of President Donald Trump telling Fox News about his cognitive exam, in which he was asked to remember five words, but he couldn't recall them during the interview. Instead, he said that it was similar to asking him to remember "person, woman, man, camera, TV."
It's unclear how many of those exams Trump has had since then, but he's told the media that he has taken three in the first year of his presidency.
The Daily Beast noticed that Trump is even bragging to China's President, Xi Jinping, about his mental faculties.
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is used by healthcare professionals to detect early-onset Alzheimer's Disease, dementia, or mild cognitive impairment. If necessary, the individual can then take a significantly more extensive cognitive exam that takes several hours and measures both mental cognition and physical reactions. The average score is 26/30. Anyone ranking below 10 correct is considered severely cognitively impaired.
Sometimes, Trump forgets that it is a dementia test and refers to the exam as an IQ test. The Daily Beast noted that some in the medical community view Trump's frequent testing and repeating it as a brag as a "red flag."
In recent weeks, Trump has bragged that he identified both a bear and a squirrel.
“If you have one MoCA, that’s like taking your temperature,” Dr. Henry David Abraham, professor of psychiatry emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, told the Beast. " If a temperature is okay, you don’t come back every 10 minutes and take another temperature. But if it’s not okay, then you want to see where it’s going."
“When they’re repeated that way clinically, we are in fact looking for slippage. We want to know how quickly he’s going down. Has he gone off a cliff?” Abraham said. “We do know that the behavior is worrisome, that they looked at it three times.”
Typically, physicals are given annually, and the test is given with them for older patients. Trump had two physicals in 2025.
Trump, who will turn 80 in one month, bragged to the 72-year-old Xi that he'd taken the cognitive exam for the third time and "aced" it.
None of Trump's doctors has spoken out about Trump's dementia tests.
“That’s a political hot potato because suppose transparent Dr. Barbabella came forward and said, ‘Well, yeah, we gave him three MoCAs, because we’re tracking his cognitive function, and it’s been going downhill,’” Dr. Abraham explained to the Beast. “Well, that’s important to know, Dr. Barbabella, how steep is that hill?”
The report came the day after Trump landed in China, and, for the first time anyone can remember, reporters revealed that Trump didn't come back to speak to the press during the 20-plus-hour flight. It prompted questions about his health as bruises are now appearing on the top of both of his hands. The White House has claimed that it's because he shakes hands with a lot of people; however, Trump isn't regularly seen shaking hands with his left.