Joe Biden and Donald Trump are, respectively, the oldest and second oldest presidents in American history. As both attack each other over their mental acuity in the 2024 election, they have also fielded calls for cognitive tests because of their age.
After a stumbling debate performance by Biden in which he seemed hard to follow and would lose his train of thought, concerns about his age and mental fitness have ratcheted up.
In a Friday night interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Biden, 81, refused to commit to taking a cognitive test. “I have a cognitive test every day,” said Biden, who would be 86 when he leaves office if re-elected in November.
Trump, 78, also faced questions about his cognition when he was in office. In 2018, his White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, now a Republican congressman, said Trump took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, a common and quick test used by health professionals to help identify dementia or cognitive loss. Trump had a “normal” score of “30/30,” Jackson said. Trump said he “aced” it.
In January, Trump, who would be 82 by the time he leaves office, boasted that he had again aced the MoCA test, adding he had to point out a whale among animals with questions getting progressively harder. However, the test doesn’t include a whale, MoCA’s developer, Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, told the Washington Post.
The MoCA test only looks for minimum cognitive faculties, not someone’s rigor. In other words, MoCA is supposed…
