My unfounded theory about Trump's cognitive test

Trump says he took the cognitive test "recently", so my guess is after he was rushed to the hospital in secrecy in November, which they tried to palm off as a continuation of his annual physical. He suffered some kind of episode that would have made the doctors believe a cognitive test was warranted.

I just looked up an incident to check the date: In July of 2017, Trump descended the steps of Air Force One, with his limo at the bottom and the door open, but instead of getting in the car, he wandered aimlessly out on the tarmac until a Secret Service agent brought him back to the car. That was six months before his test, and I don’t remember what else happened after that, but there must have been evidence of cognitive decline. Why else would you take such a test?

Trump is now claiming that the test had 30-35 questions, which it doesn’t. Plus the test is designed to be completed in 10-12 minutes. If it took Trump 20 minutes, that’s a bad sign.

We’ve all seen Trump’s decline (remember statements like the nonsensical reference to having to flush toilets 15 times). I think Biden should agree to take the cognitive assessment from an independent source and then challenge Trump to take the same assessment from that independent source and agree to release the results publicly. The fact that Trump took this test more than two years ago and seems to have had decline then means that his decline may be significantly worse today.

Faux news DR, trump said he took it a year ago, or almost a year ago. trump's midnight ride to Walter Reed fits your timeline.

My 2 cents

Trump is an ass.

He's also an idiot.

Is that 4¢?

Yes

Did I miss hear or did the orange shit said his cognitive test was administered by The former White House physician now running for Congress in Texas!!

That's kind of a problem.

He said Dr. Ronnie Jackson gave him the test, and Jackson hasn't been the WH doc since 2018.

So when exactly was the test administered?

He also kept repeating the 5 words he was asked to remember -- as if this showed his memory is fine. Not. He repeated them by rote, just as someone would repeat the 5 times table.

before he went to take the test.

They didn't want to have to document that the president has a damaged brain.

Like all things around Trump, hide the evidence.

because they wouldn't fit on one hand. Little pictures. He still can't read.

Win or lose, I don't think his enablers much care what happens to him after Nov 3. If they can somewhat stabilize him, for the duration, maybe they think they have a chance for another four years of exploitation/dismantling.

should be administering it to make certain he doesn't forget to take it.

He seems to have a 'productive' history with those.

They don't usually order that test without a suspicion that something is awry. I do know that.

I would also guess that by the time one is ordered, the patient will, almost by definition, have some trouble with it. By then, there have already been enough scary signs. The test likely confirms the suspicions.

How would I feel as the medical professional? Seems to me that as a matter of national security, I'd want to say something. But I'm not there, so I can't say what I would actually do. I'd feel like shit, though.

"First, do no harm" Don't they see they are harming the entire country, if not the world by passing this clown off as "normal"? Most of us with no medical credentials can recognise dementia creeping on when we see it. No stretch of the imaginmation can hide tRump's floundering. My question is "Who is running the country? Jared? Stephen Miller? Mnuchin?" The entire gop traitors? Or, could it be PUTIN?

And they can commit anyone deemed to be a danger to him/herself or others. Just not sure what their options are in this case. I’m not a doctor.

A tale of the modern world

his memory. I know I could not remember the 5 words the doc gives you to remember a few minutes later. My short term memory has always sucked. Long term is pretty damn good.

Trumps problem is not that he could not remember stuff for the test, his problem has always been that he is a narcissist self-centered habitual liar is just so happens to be a traitor. Not much different that his administration and a lot of those in congress.

Whether it's true or not, we cannot say, but it's reasonable.

tests in my career. It is unethical for anyone to administer a test in a non-standard fashion unless you specifically note that you did so. For instance, if I had a child who was not able to answer enough questions to meet the basal (base), then I might continue to administer the test in a non-standardized way to get some information. I would not be able to calculate or give a standard score, but I'd have some information to use to write my report. In my report, I would have to write how I administered the test, etc. "James was unable to answer enough questions correctly to calculate a basal" or "James did not sit long enough to participate in testing today."

I would have lost my license and certification if I had "coached" anyone to help them pass a test.

Point being, if this happened, it's amazing the lengths people will go to accommodate him.

He is speculating about the same doctor that said Trump was 239 pounds and could live to be 200.

Just saying that accuracy and ethics are already suspect.

The confession comes after goons raided his office and seized the records.

[link:https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/02/607638733/doctor-trump-dictated-letter-attesting-to-his-extraordinary-health|

By the way, if he never had any orthopedic surgery the bone spurs should still be there. They do not miraculously go away.

The...patient dictated the report of his own physical exam.

No doubt about it: the closing sentence is a dead giveaway...if you'll pardon the expression...


rocktivity

I know, I have them, but they don't impede my walking.

I respect your points about privacy requirements and proper test taking/score recording. These issues are important to protect the patient and maintain the integrity of the test.

The situation with Trump, however, is different. He's the president so all of the normal rules go out the window. His test results would never be made public as we've seen with the false reports about his health.

If something is seriously wrong with Trump, there's no way his handlers would tell us.

i can't speak to the protocols of the moca test specifically, but as a former emt, i frequently tested patients for alertness and orientation, which tries to get a some of the same things the moca test does (and in fact, a portion of the moca test is exactly that).

it's not an exact science, for instance, consider orientation to date. the test asks if you know today's date. but what the emergency happened near midnight and they get it on the wrong side? moreover, if the person doesn't have a steady job or school or something else that demands knowing exactly what date it is, people often don't know.

i can't tell you how many times during this pandemic mrs. unblock or mini-unblock have asked by what day of the week it was. they're not cognitively impaired, they're alert and oriented times three just fine, it's just that knowing the exact date or day of the week is simply not an important part of their current lives such that they should know it of the top of their heads.


so as an emt, i often had to prompt or ask a different follow-up question or gauge the response. for instance:

"what? date? um, i was married on a sunday in 1956, it was a beautiful spring day!" -- not alert and oriented to date

"what's the date? what's that got to do with the pain in my chest? i don't know! i got a package on monday, that was 2 or 3 days ago, so maybe it's thursday. or wednesday. who gives a crap! i'm retired! just get me in the truck and drive me to the hospital!" -- alert and oriented to date, even if it's saturday.

i'd be surprised if the moca test protocol didn't provide for some degree of prompting.


as for the ethics involved, we'll probably never know what the doctors wrote on his test results or what they informed donnie, his handlers, and his family. i'd assume they did their job ethically, but were then barred from telling the public the truth (well privacy laws do this anyway).

The whole thing is beginning to look a lot like the Movie "Dave."

Barr is probably running the country, and Barr is a fascist who needs to die in prison and I predict he will.

Pence? Miller? Mnuchin? Kudlow? Ross?

Trump is just out of it.

boasting about the test at all.

if he wasn't impaired and he passed the test, it would be a non-event and neither he nor anyone else would be talking about it.

the fact that he's talking about it and gloating about passing it and trying, in his own pathetic way, to puff himself up and make him look like a genius for passing the test is surely because he *didn't* pass it, and that triggered his need to lie about it.


unfortunately for donnie, he's such a terrible liar, that he doesn't realize that when he says it was a very hard test, that makes it worse for him. he's trying to say it's a hard test so him passing it proves he's a genius, but the rest of us understand that him finding it hard only means (even if we take him at his word) that he was very borderline on passing.

1. Nurses
2. Speech / Language Therapists
3. Occupational Therapists
4. Neurologists
5. Psychologists
6. Geriatricians
7. Family Practice Physicians

Does this scream, "stable genius," to anyone?

However since he included biden on this I have another theory. Somehow trump got word that biden took a cognative test and failed it. So now he wants to challenge biden. Why else would he keep talking about this when nobody cares. He's old, crazy, and lacks good judgement.

I WOULDN'T CARE IF BIDEN SAT AROUND NAKED EATING HIS OWN FECES, HE WILL STILL BE A MUCH BETTER PRESIDENT THAN TRUMP.

TRUMP CAN PASS ALL THE TESTS YOU GIVE HIM, IT DOESN'T MATTER, IT'S WHAT WE SEE IN HIM AS THE PRESIDENT: A DISHONEST, UNTRUSTWORTHY MAN WHO SHOWS POOR JUDGEMENT IN THE EXECUTION OF HIS DUTIES. WHEN IT COMES TO POOR JUDGEMENT, YOU CAN FIND DOZENS OF EXAMPLES (PORTLAND, UKRAINE, RUSSIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE, PARDONING SCUMBAGS, INTERFERING IN MILITARY TRIBUNALS TO RELEASE NAVY CRIMINAL BECAUSE "HE LIKES ME"

Of course we don't know for sure, but we DO know that what you describe is generally how things and people operate. We do know that something happened when he got sent to Walter Reed. When he was getting in the car, he was holding something in, I believe, his left hand. He seemed to be clutching onto something. It might have been a hanky or a tissue paper. He might have been drooling.

At the very least, there is extremely strong circumstantial evidence to support it.

He's been demonstrating behaviors and speech patterns that are glaringly obvious to anyone familiar with cognitive decline/disease. There are other physical symptoms (probable balance issues) that lead to this conclusion as well. He's always been bombastic (and it's only progressed since then), but now he's blasting out things that are so off the chain that, if he were one of my parents, I'd be doing everything in my power to get them diagnosed and treated - to the extent medical treatment exists to do so (which isn't much). BTW, I had two parents (both well into their eighties by then) who started exhibiting such symptoms of dementia and both of them eventually had to be institutionalized. The nightmare is when a younger person who is relatively healthy from a physical standpoint begins to develop alarming cognitive decline. Unfortunately, our family (my husband's cousin) is in that situation now. She lives in Florida and there are no relatives there any longer. Her daughter is struggling (from here in Texas) with the problem about getting her into a facility where she is not in danger of elopement and possible physical danger from a human predator. In tRump's case, it's like having an out of control toddler who has to be followed around by a parent throughout the day to prevent them from injuring themselves or wreaking havoc. He should not be anywhere near the WH now.

When he was convinced that there was a dumpster load in his paper diaper, he drop his trousers, looked and declared that it was a big, beautiful steamer. That's when he was told that there were cameras and interviewers waiting for him to talk about his Goya bean diet -- over at the WH medical station.

You made me laugh out loud! The scenario you described gave me an image of Trump in the Oval Office, like I was watching "The West Wing."

Hysterical!

and when he read "This guy is a total ass", Trump thought it said "This guy is a total ace".

...administered unless there were concerns.