“I think it was 30, 35 questions,” the former president said of the test, which he said involved a few animal-identification questions. “They always show you the first one, like a giraffe, a tiger, or this, or that, and then: a whale. ‘Which one is the whale?’ Okay. And that goes on for three or four [questions], and then it gets harder, and harder, and harder.”
Trump, 77, said he aced the exam, which he said he took to silence the critics who claim he may be too old or cognitively incapable to run for president.
Chief among those critics is former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who — to gain ground on Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary — has sharpened her pitch against him by doubling down on questioning his age and cognitive abilities.
Since the beginning of her campaign, the 51-year-old Haley has proposed that politicians and lawmakers over the age of 75 be required to take a “mental competency test” before they’re allowed another term in office. And while she has mainly targeted President Biden’s age — 81 — on the trail, in recent days she has also been drawing in Trump when arguing that the country needs younger leaders.
After finishing third in the Iowa caucuses behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Haley has repeatedly pointed to Trump’s age as an attack line in television ads and media interviews ahead of the crucial New Hampshire primary next week.
“The majority of Americans think that having two 80-year-olds running for president is not what they want,” she said at a campaign stop Tuesday in Bretton Woods, N.H. On Wednesday and Thursday, she more than once accused Trump of throwing a “temper tantrum.”
The attacks appear to be bothering the former president, who on Wednesday night spent a good portion of his remarks talking about how young he feels and boasting about his cognitive abilities.
“I feel like I’m about 35 years old,” he said. “I actually feel better now than I did 30 years ago. Tell me, is that crazy? I feel better now, and I think cognitively I’m better than I was 20 years ago. I don’t know why.”
A spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Haley’s attacks on the former president’s age. The campaigns of both Biden and Trump as well as experts on aging have stated that the two remain physically capable of being president even with demanding schedules. Each candidate disclosed positive health reports from their physicians during this campaign cycle.
Wednesday’s campaign event wasn’t the first time Trump boasted about the results of his cognitive test, which The Washington Post previously reported was administered at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early 2018 by Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, then the White House’s top physician and now a congressman. Trump talked about it on the campaign trail in 2020, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity in a July 2020 interview that he’d “aced it.” In subsequent interviews on Fox days later, Trump went further, revisiting what the then-president said was the hardest part of the test — repeating five words, in order.
Trump said he was first asked to repeat a set of words — “person,” “woman,” “man,” “camera,” “TV,” he said, offering a hypothetical example — and then, later in the assessment after some time had elapsed, he was again asked whether he remembered those same words, in order.
“And they say… ‘Go back to that question, and repeat them. Can you do it?’ ” Trump said, mimicking the doctors administering the exam. “And you go, ‘Person,…
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