The Presidential Cognitive Test

PERSON WOMAN MAN CAMERA TV

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

If you can identify an elephant or a hippo from a picture, or count backwards from 100 in reductions of seven, and know the date, month and year it is today, then you too are eminently qualified to be the President of the United States.

Donald Trump has been bragging that he has aced the test he was recently “persuaded” to take at the Walter Reed Hospital after displaying behaviour more erratic, even nuttier than usual, of signs of probable onset of dementia.

The test under reference, called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), was created by neurologist, Dr. Ziad Nasreddin, of the Alzheimer Society of Canada. “It’s not an IQ test”, said Dr. Nasreddin, “It’s supposed to help physicians detect early signs of Alzheimer’s, and it’s supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment.”

There is always that one kid who was with you in school who brags, usually after a few drinks, that he had aced every test at school, claims to have won the most prestigious awards the school had to offer and scored a ton in the big match which he played only in his dreams. Proving that old maxim “The older we get, the better we were.” Donald Trump is the superlative American persona of this kid.

The MoCA is a screening test designed to evaluate various cognitive functions: attention and concentration, executive functions, memory, language, visuo-constructional skills, conceptual thinking, simple mathematical calculations and orientation.

The 30 questions, in seven parts, are designed to assess multiple aspects of thinking typically impacted by dementia:

=Connect numbered dots in sequence, and draw three-dimensional shapes (like a cube)

=Identify familiar animals (a camel, a hippo, an elephant)

=Draw a clock, including all of the numbers, and set the time to 10 minutes past 11

=Repeat sequence backwards from 100 to 0 in reductions of 7

=Listen to a series of five words and repeat them, in order, a short time later

=Speak and understand whole sentences

I am really surprised that Trump passed this. The following are real sentences Trump spoke during a recent speech, providing valuable advice on household implements, verbatim:

“I did a lot of this sinks, showers, all of this stuff. I did a lot of it. No water comes out. You have some areas where there’s so much water you don’t know what to do with it. You turn on the shower, you’re not allowed to have any water anymore.

“Dishwashers, the dishwasher, right? You press it. Remember the dishwasher, you press it, there’d be like an explosion. Five minutes later you open it up and the steam pours out, the dishes…. now you press it 12 times, women tell me again.

“Well, we like the old light bulb better. I said, I like it better, and so what I did is you can either one. If you want to buy the newer kind you can and if you want to look very handsome or beautiful by buying the older kind like I do. It probably gives a better light whatever it is and you’ll be able to spend a lot less money on a light bulb. I mean, it sounds like little but it’s big stuff. OK. It’s big stuff.”

This is the test that Trump says he aced, and even the doctors at the Walter Reed were amazed at how well he had performed. Trump claims they said, “That’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anyone do what you just did.” Perhaps these doctors had set a very low bar for Trump and were shocked he didn’t provide conclusive evidence of Alzheimer’s or Dementia.

At a recent interview on Fox News, veteran newsman, Chris Wallace, mercilessly exposed Trump’s penchant for delusion. When Trump said he got a perfect result on the MoCA test, that he had answered all 35 questions. Wallace, who had a copy of the test with him, pointed out that the test contained only 30 questions. This means that Trump gave himself credit for filling in the information required at the top of the test: name, education (about which I have no doubt he lied), sex, date of birth and current date!

He was so proud of his performance that he challenged Joe Biden, his Democratic rival, to take the test with him. “Let’s take the test right now. Let’s go down, Joe and I will take a test right now. Let him take the same test I took.”

This challenge was the Sri Lankan schoolyard equivalent of “Come for a fight”! Fine for the third form at Royal College, but this is the President of the United States, folks.

Wallace told him at the interview that he also had taken the same cognitive test when he heard that Trump had passed it. “It’s not the hardest test. They have a picture and it says what’s that? and it’s an elephant.

Trump got hysterical. “No, no, no. It’s all misrepresentation. Because yes, the first few questions are easy, but I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t, they get very hard, the last five questions.”

At yet another interview with Fox News Contributor, Dr. Marc Siegel, Trump described the hardest question at great length, one that no one but a stable genius could answer correctly, viz. Listen to these five words: PERSON, WOMAN, MAN, CAMERA, TV. Then repeat these words, in the same order, 15 minutes later. Trump somehow convinced himself, however, that (the test) is akin to a MENSA exam, and his ability to score a perfect score is proof of his genius. “The poor guy seems stuck, unable to shake his preoccupation with it.”

Trump is so obsessed with this test, as he needs voters to believe it proves beyond any doubt that he is cognitively capable of doing his job. Which probably is an indication he is trying to convince himself that, in the alternative world in which he lives, America is doing wonderfully well under his “strong leadership”.

Also, this obsession may show that he is beginning to understand why his popularity rates are tanking. His current desperation is making him take more dangerous, illegal, even unconstitutional actions to win re-election by any means. He has recently deployed federal troops to states run by Democratic governors, without requests from their governors, indeed in spite of their resistance, to “subdue” protestors against police brutality. Protests which have been escalating in all parts of the nation since George Floyd was murdered on May 25, eight weeks ago.

Trump is following Hitler’s playbook to the letter; Hitler sent his Storm Troopers known as the Brownshirts, the Nazi Party militia, to serve as the Nazi army to quell German protests in the 1930s.

Three of the last and most difficult questions on the test were:

=Serial 7 subtraction starting at 100: 93, 86, 79…..

=Fluency: Name maximum number of words in one minute that begin with the letter F (passing grade – 11 words)

=Orientation: Date, Month, Year, Day, Place, City (This last question in the test was worth six points of the total 30!)

My six-year old grandson will ace this test, no problem.

I am, of course, praying (as fervently as only an atheist can pray) that Trump will not win a second four year-term or postpone/cancel elections by illegal means or refuse to leave the White House if he is defeated at the polls. But I suspect there’s a nagging fear in every journalist’s mind that they will have to buckle down to some serious hard work next year if a real president is elected. The jokes will be no longer be writing themselves on a daily basis.