Trump’s mental acuity questioned on Fox News

‘This mental acuity test... is something to give to people who have been in traumatic accidents,’ Democratic strategist says

Donald Trump’s mental acuity was questioned on Fox News by Democratic strategist, Jessica Tarlov, during a segment of The Five on Wednesday night.

Co-host Jeanine Pirro said, “You know, Jessica, Trump took a mental acuity test and aced it – why won’t Biden?”

“Well, this mental acuity test, which included identifying animals and counting backwards by a factor of seven, is something to give to people who have been in traumatic accidents... it’s embarrassing when Trump says that and when he did ‘man, person, woman, camera, whatever he said to [former Fox anchor] Chris Wallace,” Ms Tarlov said.

Mr Trump has mentioned the test several times in the past.

“It was 30 or 35 questions. The first questions are very easy. The last questions are much more difficult,” he told Fox News in 2020.

“You’ll go, ‘person, woman, man, camera, TV’,” he added. “They say, ‘could you repeat that?’ ... So it’s, ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ OK, that’s very good. If you get it in order, you get extra points,” he added.

In July of 2020, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity that “I proved I was all there because I aced it”.

He claimed that the doctors at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland told him, “That’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did”.

The questions are similar to the questions on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Newsweek noted. The test screens for early signs of dementia.

Fourteen Republican members of the House called on President Joe Biden to take the test in June 2021. One of the signers of a letter arguing for the test was former White House physician Ronny Jackson, now a Texas House Republican representative.

During his time as the White House physician, Dr Jackson said in 2018 that Mr Trump had got a perfect score on a cognitive test, adding that there was “no reason whatsoever to think the president has any issues whatsoever with his thought processes”.

Dr Jackson was recently demoted by the US Navy following an inspector general’s report finding that he drank and took drugs while working in the Trump White House, The Washington Post reported earlier this month.

The report found that Dr Jackson’s “overall course of conduct towards subordinates disparaged, belittled, bullied, and humiliated them, and fostered a negative work environment,” and “engaged in inappropriate conduct involving the use of alcohol”.

Navy spokesperson Joe Keiley said: “The substantiated allegations in the DoDIG [Department of Defense Office of Inspector General] investigation of Rear Adm (lower half) Ronny Jackson are not in keeping with the standards the Navy requires of its leaders and, as such, the Secretary of the Navy took administrative action in July 2022.”