Trump Claims Perfect MoCA Scores Amid Fact-Checks

President Donald Trump highlighted his performance on cognitive assessments during a Cabinet meeting in the Oval Office on March 26, 2026, drawing immediate fact-checks from social media platforms and medical experts amid ongoing discussions about his health.

The 79-year-old president, the oldest to assume the office upon his inauguration in January 2025, told reporters and officials that he had taken the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, three times the previous year and scored perfectly each time. "I'm the only president that ever took a cognitive test," Trump said. "I took it three times. It's actually a very hard test for a lot of people. It wasn't hard for me." He described the exam as beginning with simple questions that grew progressively more challenging, including "very tough mathematical equations and things" by the end, and noted that one doctor remarked he had never seen anyone complete it flawlessly in 20 years of administering the test.

The MoCA, a 10- to 15-minute screening tool developed to detect mild cognitive impairment or early signs of dementia, includes basic tasks such as identifying animals like a camel, drawing a clock, and performing serial...