President Donald Trump told on himself after he explained why he thinks prospective presidential candidates should be required to take cognitive exams—seemingly oblivious to all the concerns about his own cognitive decline.
Trump was discussing his administration's pledge that Social Security benefits would be tax-free in an appearance before senior citizens at The Villages, a prominent Florida retirement community, when he made the claim.
He said:
"I think anybody running for president or vice president should be forced to take a cognitive examination. I mean, you get a guy who gets in there, he’s got a good line of crap. He gets in, and all of a sudden, you’re stuck with a man who’s a moron. That's not good."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Trump's remarks are a classic case of projection on his end.
He has previously been criticized for bragging about acing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which he's referred to as an "intelligence test."
While he bragged about acing an exam used to assess cognitive impairment, he failed to understand that the higher your score, the worse the outcome—and that claiming he performed better than Democrats would if they were in his position isn't at all a good thing.
When you factor in all the bonkers stuff Trump says on a daily basis, the irony was off the charts.
Trump has grown increasingly fixated on the idea that prospective presidential candidates should undergo cognitive testing, even as he continues to target Gavin Newsom, the California governor widely expected to seek the presidency in 2028 and one of the most prominent voices drawing attention to Trump’s perceived cognitive and physical decline.
Trump said that Newsom isn't fit for the presidency because he has a "cognitive deficiency." Trump claimed Newsom "admitted he has mental problems, that he’s not a smart person, that he has a mental lack of ability, he’s unable to read a speech." Trump, with no sense of irony, said, "I'm for everybody, but when it comes to president, you've gotta be sharp."
Newsom has frequently spoken about living with dyslexia, a common learning disability that can make reading more difficult and affect spelling and speech. He has said he prefers not to rely on teleprompters because of the condition, and wrote in a recent memoir that, when he was younger, he overcompensated by memorizing “pretentious words.”
Later, in a post on Truth Social, Trump said Newsom "said, in a speech, he was dumb, had low Boards, can’t read, has dyslexia, and has a mental disorder — A Cognitive Mess!" He claimed Newsom is "no longer a viable Presidential Candidate!"
Newsom replied by reminding his followers that he'd merely spoken about his dyslexia, something "hard for a brain-dead moron who bombs children and protects pedophiles to understand."
