Donald Trump has been called a tyrant, a dictator, a fascist, and a threat to democracy. None of those seemed to bother him nearly as much as one much smaller insult.
At a rally at Rockland Community College in Suffern on Friday, Trump revealed the label he really hated hearing.
“They hit me with a bad one: He’s a dumb person. D-U-M, not the B,” Trump told the crowd, before adding: “Most people don’t know it has a B.” The audience laughed.
Trump: “He’s a dumb person! D-U-M. Not the B. Most people don’t know it has a B.” pic.twitter.com/0Rc1axQfOj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 22, 2026
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From there, the story somehow became even stranger.
Trump launched into a long retelling of a conversation with his doctor, walking the crowd through his frustration, the doctor’s advice and his eventual decision to take a cognitive exam to prove critics wrong.
“I said, ‘Doctor, I don’t mind being called a brilliant tyrant dictator, but I don’t want to be called dumb,'” Trump recalled. “‘What do I do, doctor? Is there some kind of test I can take?’ He said, ‘Actually, sir, there is. It’s a cognitive test.’ I said, ‘How many presidents have taken it?’ ‘None… No people have taken it.’ I said, ‘Well, is it good or bad? Is it tough?'”
The rally then turned into a live reenactment of the exam itself.
Trump walked supporters through one of the questions. “So, the first question was: you have a bear, a snake, an elephant, and a horse. Name the horse. That’s the horse,” he said while mimicking how he completed the test. He said five doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center administered the exam and warned him that poor results would become public. “I said, ‘Well, it will be public, won’t it. I’ll be an embarrassment, but let’s do it.'”
He passed the test.
He has also talked about passing it enough times that many Americans probably know the horse question by memory now.
What Trump keeps referring to as a cognitive test is the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a ten minute screening tool used to flag possible early dementia symptoms in patients already showing warning signs.
That distinction has continued fueling criticism from mental health experts.
Dr. Henry David Abraham, a psychiatry professor, explained it this way: “If you have one MoCA, that’s like taking your temperature. If a temperature is OK, you don’t come back every 10 minutes and take another temperature. But if it’s not OK, then you want to see where it’s going.”
Meanwhile, Dr. John Gartner, a former Johns Hopkins University professor, offered a far harsher assessment during an appearance on The Daily Beast Podcast. “Anybody who has eyes, ears, and a brain… and hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid or been bitten by a MAGA zombie, can see for themselves that this person is transparently mentally ill and cognitively deteriorating.”
Featured image via X screengrab
