Cognitive confusion: Donald Trump refers to dementia screening as 'very hard' IQ test

President Donald Trump claimed during a press briefing aboard Air Force One on October 27, 2025 that he had taken an “IQ test” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and achieved a perfect score, challenging Democratic Representatives Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez to take the same exam.

In reality, the question test appears to have been the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)—a brief screening tool for early cognitive decline, not an intelligence (IQ) test, according to People. The discrepancy between what was claimed and what experts say the test measures raises questions about transparency, health communication, and political messaging.


What Trump said and how he framed it
Trump described the test as “very hard” and suggested it was akin to an aptitude or cognitive exam:
“They have Jasmine Crockett, a low IQ person. AOC is low IQ… You give her an IQ test, have her pass, like, the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed… I took- Those are very hard- They’re really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way, but they’re cognitive tests.”

He also recounted what he said were sample questions:

“The first couple questions are easy: a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about five or six and then when you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.”


What the test really is

• The MoCA is a 10-to-15-minute cognitive screening tool designed to detect early signs of dementia or cognitive impairment . It assesses memory, attention, language, visuospatial skills and orientation.
• Neurologist Ziad Nasreddine, who developed the MoCA, has stated clearly: “There are no studies showing that this test is correlated to IQ tests. The purpose of it was not to determine persons who have a low IQ level.”
• Media analysis confirms that while Trump bragged about passing an “IQ test,” experts and documents show the exam used was a dementia screening , not an IQ or intelligence test.

Globally, questions about the health and cognitive fitness of older political leaders are increasingly common. Screening tools exist to identify early impairment, but they are not designed to evaluate intelligence or overall leadership capacity. Media literacy around such tests remains low; when high-profile figures misuse or mislabel them, public misunderstanding grows.