Former President Donald Trump, during a speech at a Turning Point Action convention in Detroit on Saturday night, called for President Joe Biden to take a cognitive test similar to one he himself underwent. However, Trump mistakenly referred to Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson, who was the White House physician during part of his presidency, as “Ronny Johnson.”
Trump’s statement was part of his ongoing questioning of Biden’s mental acuity. He said, “He doesn’t even know what the word ‘inflation’ means. I think he should take a cognitive test like I did.” Seconds later, he continued, “Doc Ronny Johnson. Does everyone know Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas? He was the White House doctor, and he said I was the healthiest president, he feels, in history, so I liked him very much indeed immediately.”
Rep. Jackson was elected to Congress in 2021 and is a staunch defender of Trump. Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, has made questioning whether the 81-year-old Biden is up for a second term a centerpiece of his campaign.
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which Trump took in 2018, includes tasks such as remembering a list of spoken words, repeating random numbers backward, naming words that begin with a specific letter, drawing a cube, and describing similarities between objects. Trump had previously stated that he had to remember and recite a list of words in order: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”
In the same speech, Trump also referenced a video clip circulating among Republicans, showing Biden watching skydivers land with flags at the recent Group of Seven summit in Italy. A cropped version of the video showed Biden stepping away from the leaders and walking in another direction. Trump falsely described Biden as turning around “to look at trees,” drawing laughter from the crowd.
The Biden campaign issued a statement dismissing the video clip as misleadingly cropped and accusing those disseminating it of “tampering with the video to make up lies.”
