Mr Trump suggested Mr Biden “take a cognitive test”, before getting the name of the doctor wrong who administered his own cognitive test when he was president.
ADVERTISEMENT
Donald Trump suggested Saturday evening that President Joe Biden “should take a cognitive test,” before getting the name of the person who gave him the test before in the next sentence wrong.
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee referred to the Texas Republican Ronny Jackson, who served as the White House physician for part of his presidency, calling him “Ronny JohnsonThe moment came as Mr. Trump questioned Mr. Biden’s mental acuity, something he often does on the campaign trail and on social media.
“He doesn’t even know what the word ‘inflation’ means. I think he should take a cognitive test like I did,” the former president said of Mr. Biden during a speech delivered at a Turning Point Action convention in Detroit.
A few seconds later, he added: “Doc Ronny Johnson. Everyone knows Ronny Johnson, Congressman from Texas? He was the White House physician, and he said I was the oldest president healthy, according to him, of the story, so I really liked it, indeed, immediately.”
Mr. Jackson was elected to Congress in 2021 and is one of Mr. Trump’s strongest defenders on Capitol Hill.
Mutual jabs at health
Mr. Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, has made the question of whether Mr. Biden, 81, could run for a second term, a central plank of his campaign. But online critics quickly seized on his Saturday night gaffe, and Mr. Biden’s campaign — which has long fought off criticism over the Democratic president’s verbal missteps — posted a clip of the moment online a few minutes later later.
Mr. Trump took the cognitive test in 2018 at his own request, Mr. Jackson told reporters at the time. The test is designed to detect early signs of memory loss and other mild cognitive impairments.
The Montreal cognitive assessment that Mr. Trump underwent involves remembering a list of spoken words, listening to a list of random numbers and repeating them backwards, naming as many words as possible beginning with the letter F, for example, in one minute, to precisely draw a cube and concretely describe how two objects — such as a train and a bicycle — look alike.
Later, Mr. Trump said he had to remember a list of words in order and recite them accurately: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”
During the same speech in Detroit, Mr. Trump also referenced a video clip that has been circulating widely online in Republican circles and in which Mr. Biden is seen at the Group of Seven summit that just took place. ending in Italy, watching paratroopers land with flags of different nations.
A cropped version of the video shows Mr. Biden walking away from the leaders, turning his back on them and walking in the other direction. He gives a thumbs up, but it’s not clear who he’s waving at. A fuller angle of the same scene, however, shows the president turning to face a paratrooper who has landed.
A White House press secretary posted a fuller version of the video and, below it, the cropped version. The official accused media baron Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post, of deliberately distorting the truth to support Mr. Trump.
The latter nevertheless seized the video clip, falsely describing Mr. Biden turning “to look at the trees”, which sparked laughter from the crowd.
Mr. Biden’s campaign released a statement calling the clip a misleading crop and accusing those who released it of “doctoring the video to make up lies.”
