'Biden couldn't answer those questions': Trump boasts of passing cognitive test of animal pictures and basic numeracy

'One of them was ‘count back from 100 by seven’', Chris Wallace told US president 

Gino Spocchia
Monday 20 July 2020 15:51 BST
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Donald Trump challenges Joe Biden to take cognitive test again

Donald Trump has claimed that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden could not pass a cognitive test that the president claims to have "aced".

Mr Trump said during an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News that Mr Biden could not pass the same cognitive test he previously took, rejecting the reporter’s claims that it was “easy”.

Some sections of the cognitive test were shown as the interview aired, with numeracy and cartoon animals among the questions Mr Trump claimed were hard.

“I guarantee you Joe Biden couldn’t answer those questions,” said Mr Trump. “And I answered all 35 questions correctly.”

“Biden can’t put two sentences together. They wheel him out, he goes up, he repeats, they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement,” said the president.

Those comments came when Mr Wallace presented Mr Trump with a Fox News poll putting him behind Mr Biden on “mental soundness to serve effectively as president”.

Some 47 per cent said to Fox News that Mr Biden was mentally sound, and 39 per cent said he wasn’t, whilst 43 per cent said Mr Trump was mentally sound, and 51 per cent said he was not.

“Well, I tell you what, let’s take a test, take a test right now,” said Mr Trump on the poll. “Let’s go down, Joe [Biden] and I will take a test, let him take the same test that I took.”

Mr Wallace, who had taken the same cognitive test prior to the interview, told the president: “Incidentally I took the same test when I heard you’d passed it, and it’s not the hardest test – they have a picture that says ‘what’s that?’, and it’s an elephant”.

Mr Trump, who then admitted that some questions were “easy”, dubbed the Fox News host’s comments as “misrepresentation”.

“Yes, the first few questions are easy, but I bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions,” said Mr Trump. “They get very hard”.

“Well, one of them was ‘count back from 100 by seven’,” said Mr Wallace.

“You couldn’t answer, you couldn’t answer many of the questions,” continued the president, as the Fox News host laughed.

Mr Trump said last month that doctors were surprised when he “aced” the same test, which he again claimed Mr Biden could not pass.

The two septuagenarians have continued to trade insults over each other’s suitability for president, with either candidate set to become the oldest person elected to the US presidency in November.

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