Dwain Northey (Gen X)

“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” – The Einstein of Our Age

There are moments in American history when greatness announces itself with fireworks, marble statues, or stirring speeches. And then there’s Donald J. Trump, who declared his own intellectual supremacy by passing what he insists is the world’s most difficult test: a cognitive exam. Not the SATs, not the LSATs, not even a basic spelling bee — no, no. The very same test your grandmother might take if her doctor suspects early signs of memory loss.

Trump tells this story like it’s his moon landing. “They said, ‘Sir, nobody gets all the questions right,’” he brags. Of course, the questions he’s referring to are not exactly quantum physics. They’re more along the lines of, “What day is it?” “Where are you right now?” and “Can you point to a lion?” The man didn’t so much prove genius as prove he could successfully exist on planet Earth without a medical alert bracelet.

Let’s be clear — a cognitive exam is not an IQ test. It’s not even a pop quiz. It’s a screening tool doctors use to check for cognitive decline, dementia, or brain injury. You don’t just walk into your annual physical and say, “Doc, I’d like to show off my smarts. Hit me with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.” No, you take that test because something’s off — because you forgot how to get home from the grocery store, or you mistook your wife for the TV remote.

But to Donald, this wasn’t a red flag; it was a golden trophy. In his mind, he hadn’t just passed — he’d aced the Harvard entrance exam, solved Fermat’s Last Theorem, and rewritten Einstein’s relativity on the back of a McDonald’s wrapper. “They couldn’t believe how well I did,” he says. One imagines the poor neurologist nodding politely, whispering to the nurse, “Just smile and give him a sticker.”

What makes this performance art truly remarkable is the man’s utter sincerity. Trump seems to believe that being able to remember five random words in a row — “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” — is equivalent to writing the Federalist Papers. In fact, he repeated those five words for weeks like they were a sacred mantra, his personal Rosetta Stone of brilliance. The rest of us were left wondering whether he knew that the test was designed to see if someone’s memory was failing, not to confirm they were ready for Mensa membership.

And just when you think the story can’t get more absurd, Trump takes his cognitive conquest on the road — challenging actual members of Congress, like Jazmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to “take the test” because, in his own words, he doesn’t think they’d pass. Why? Because, of course, in Trump’s world, intelligence is directly proportional to skin tone and subservience. The irony is staggering: a man who needed a neurological assessment to prove he knew what a rhinoceros was, now lecturing women of color about mental fitness.

Imagine it — Trump sitting there, Sharpie in hand, smugly daring two accomplished, educated women to name the date and draw a clock face. These are women who’ve written legislation, grilled witnesses, and navigated the political minefield of Washington with more grace and intellect than Trump ever displayed in a rally speech — and yet, because they don’t fit his outdated, misogynistic, and racist idea of “smart,” he’s convinced they’d fail a test meant for post-concussion patients.

It’s the perfect Trumpian paradox: a man who doesn’t read his own briefings, who once suggested nuking hurricanes, and who can’t spell “tap” without adding an extra “e,” calling into question the cognitive ability of women who can actually spell cognitive. His fragile ego is so desperate for validation that he’s turned a medical screening into a political weapon — a test of loyalty, not logic.

The irony, of course, remains: no one takes a cognitive exam unless there’s reason to suspect cognitive issues. It’s not a test for geniuses — it’s a medical precaution. But Trump, master of rebranding, turned it into a badge of honor, a certification of “stable genius.” It’s the equivalent of bragging that you “passed your sobriety test with flying colors” when the reason you were taking it is because you drove into a lamppost.

So here we are, in the year 2025, with a man still bragging about recognizing a giraffe and remembering today’s date — and now daring congresswomen to match him in his field of “expertise.” Perhaps that’s fitting. Trump has always been the magician of mediocrity, turning the mundane into spectacle, the ordinary into self-worship. And while the rest of us might worry if our doctor ever recommends a cognitive assessment, Donald will likely frame his next one — right beside his Time magazine covers — proof, in his mind, that he’s still the sharpest tool in the shed.

Only, of course, the rest of us know that the test wasn’t to see if he was sharp. It was to see if the lights were still on.

And in the grand finale of his delusional highlight reel, we are waiting for Trump to proudly proclaims that his doctor recently gave him another “very tough” test — this one, a flexibility and range of motion test. According to Trump, the doctor looked at him in sheer awe and said, “Sir, you could be an Olympic athlete. You’ve got the flexibility of a gymnast and the arm of a major-league pitcher. You could be in the World Series right now — probably throw a no-hitter.”

It would be a perfect sequel to his cognitive saga — the man who mistook a memory test for a Mensa exam now believes a routine physical stretch means he’s ready for the Olympics. In Trump’s fantasy world, every doctor’s polite small talk becomes a divine proclamation of greatness. Next week, when he’s told his blood pressure is “normal,” expect a press release announcing that he’s achieved perfect human physiology, possibly the first man to outdo Michelangelo’s David.

In the end, Trump’s America doesn’t need facts, science, or reality — just a steady stream of compliments, imagined or otherwise. Because in his mind, every test is an IQ test, every checkup is an Olympic qualifier, and every doctor is a fan begging for an autograph.