Recently, Jimmy Kimmel decided to take Donald Trump at his word.
If Trump says his brain is sharp, Kimmel wanted proof of how sharp that really means.
So on Monday night, Kimmel put himself through the same cognitive test Trump has been bragging about for weeks. The result was not subtle. It was comedy with a point.
Trump has repeatedly boasted about passing a cognitive exam at Walter Reed Medical Center. On Truth Social, he celebrated “having aced his ‘Cognitive Examination, which no other President, or previous Vice President, was willing to take.’”
Kimmel saw an opening.
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During his monologue, he explained that he wanted to understand what Trump keeps talking about. He said he contacted a doctor who regularly administers the exam and asked her to give him the same test.
“This is the official exam administered by a medical professional. I did not see the questions ahead of time. And I’m willing to release the full unedited version if necessary,” Kimmel said.
Then he leaned in.
“With that said, let’s find out just how difficult this big, beautiful test is,” Kimmel added, “and how my brain stacks up against our stable genius president’s.”
What followed made Trump’s bragging look almost ridiculous.
Kimmel aired a 4-minute clip of himself taking the real test. The tasks were basic. He connected dots. He named words that start with the letter “f.” He identified drawings of a lion, a rhino, and a camel.
At one point, Kimmel joked, “I just saw Zootopia, so I know all the answers.”
The doctor scored the test and told him he earned a perfect score.
Kimmel’s response was quick and sharp.
“So I can be president.”
The joke landed because the bar was clearly low.
This segment did not come out of nowhere. Kimmel has been mocking Trump’s obsession with cognitive tests for months. He has argued again and again that passing an exam designed to detect serious impairment is not an achievement. It is the bare minimum.
Back in October 2025, Kimmel pushed back after Trump claimed that Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Jasmine Crockett would fail the test. Kimmel invited Crockett on his show and casually quizzed her.
When she correctly identified a drawing of an elephant, Kimmel laughed and said, “Wow, you’re gonna crush this.”
Trump’s fixation on intelligence has always been part of his image. He has called himself “a very stable genius,” said he is “by far stabler and more geniuser than any of them,” and described himself as “like, really smart.”
At the same time, he has attacked critics as “dumb as a rock” and mocked opponents over IQ.
That strategy once worked in his favor. Running against Joe Biden, Trump leaned hard into questions about mental fitness.
But now the spotlight has turned.
Since returning to office last January, Trump has faced growing scrutiny over his own public behavior. He has mixed up country names, confused foreign leaders, repeated himself, and lost his place mid sentence.
Clinical psychologists have warned that these patterns matter.
Dr. John Gartner, a former psychology professor at Johns Hopkins University, explained that dementia can intensify existing personality traits. “Whatever personality issues or problems [people with dementia] have begin to deteriorate and they become even more crude, disorganized, aggressive, confused versions of that personality disorder,” he said.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
