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Donald Trump has returned to one of his main lines of attack against Joe Biden, sharing an article that accused his opponent of hiding signs of cognitive decline and challenging him to take a dementia test in which the President scored highest.
“He cannot pass the test that I ‘agreed,'” Trump wrote in a cheep. “I should try it!”
The test Trump took is the Montreal cognitive assessment (MOCA), which was administered to him during his 2018 physical exam. He scored a score of 30 out of 30 on the test, and his doctor said at the time that the president had requested the test himself and that “he has absolutely no cognitive or mental problem. “
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MOCA, which is used to detect early signs of dementia, requires subjects to name certain animals, draw a clock face that reads 11:10, and name all the words that can begin with the letter “F” in one minute. An additional point is automatically added to the test result if the person taking it is 12 years old or younger.
While Trump and his campaign have relentlessly mocked Biden for his alleged mental decline, by sharing videos of him apparently dragging out the words and smearing him with the nickname “Sleepy Joe,” there are reports that his attempts to focus the attention of Voters on the issue are not working, and they may even be hurting Trump’s chances among older voters, some of whom consider the attacks unpleasant.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to undermine confidence in Trump’s health, or at least to enrage him by raising the issue. The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump campaign group created by Republican campaign agents, recently created an ad titled “#TrumpIsNotWell“Showing the President limping down a ramp, struggling to drink a glass of water and awkward words.
For his part, Joe Biden seems unmoved by Trump’s neurological line of attack. At a press conference this week, a journalist asked him if he had taken a test. In response, he said: “They have tested me, they test me constantly.
“Look, all you have to do is look at me, and I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive ability with the cognitive ability of the man I’m running against. Thank you very much.”
The original tweet Trump invoked came from the GOP’s “quick response” director, Steve Guest, who in turn had linked to an article in conservative extreme right exit Breitbart claiming without evidence that the Biden campaign had withheld the results of the cognitive aptitude tests that the Democratic candidate has carried out.
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