Could a simple cognitive screening be mistaken for a test of genius?
That appears to be exactly what happened when former President Donald Trump proudly claimed he had aced a “very hard” IQ exam. In reality, the test in question wasn’t designed to measure intelligence at all—it was a quick, routine assessment meant to detect early signs of cognitive decline. So did Trump genuinely misinterpret the exam, or was this just another moment to showcase his confidence in public?
Recently, aboard Air Force One, Trump boasted about a “very hard” test he had taken at Walter Reed Medical Center, even challenging Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 36, and Jasmine Crockett, 44, to try to match his score.
“They have Jasmine Crockett, a low-IQ person. AOC is low IQ,” Trump said on October 27. “You give her an IQ test, like the exams I took at Walter Reed—those are very hard, really aptitude tests in a certain way, cognitive tests. Let AOC go against Trump. Let Jasmine go against Trump.”
He described it as a memory and recall challenge, starting with simple questions like naming a tiger, an elephant, or a giraffe, before progressing to increasingly complex items. “When you get up to 10, 20, 25, they couldn’t come close,” he claimed.
In truth, Trump was referring to the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)—a brief, 10-minute screening developed to detect early signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. It is not an IQ test. According to his physician, Trump scored a perfect 30 out of 30 on the assessment during his annual checkup at Walter Reed, replicating his perfect score from 2018.
He previously mentioned on Fox News a portion of the test involved recalling a sequence of objects, joking that “Nobody gets it in order, it’s actually not that easy. But for me, it was easy.”
Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, the Canadian neurologist who created the MoCA, clarified its purpose to NBC News: “There are no studies showing this test correlates with IQ tests. The purpose was not to determine someone’s intelligence, so it does not reflect a person’s IQ.”
Trump also recently underwent lab work, imaging, and preventive screenings at Walter Reed. While it’s not clear if he repeated the MoCA, he mentioned that a recent MRI came back “perfect,” though he did not specify the reason for that scan.
Takeaway
Trump’s claims of excelling on a “very hard IQ test” highlight a common misconception: a routine medical screening can easily be mistaken for a measure of intelligence. While the MoCA confirms cognitive performance, it does not provide an IQ score. This incident serves as a reminder that understanding the purpose of medical tests is crucial—and that public interpretation doesn’t always match clinical intent.