“Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough spent a segment of Monday’s show tearing into President Donald Trump for bragging about his results on a cognitive exam for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
The duo was reacting to Trump’s Sunday interview on Fox News, during which anchor Chris Wallace pressed the president on a recent Fox News poll that showed more respondents felt presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had more “mental soundness” than incumbent Republican Trump.
“Well, I’ll tell you what: Let’s take a test,” Trump said. “Let’s take a test right now. Let’s go down. Joe and I will take a test. Let him take the same test that I took.”
Wallace persisted, pointing out the test included questions as easy as identifying an elephant in a lineup and solving simple subtraction problems. But Trump, as he has often done when challenged on his claims, did not back down.
“Because, yes, the first few questions are easy, but I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t. They get very hard, the last five questions,” he said.
Brzezinski uttered “Oh my God” in response to Trump’s defensiveness.
Earlier in the broadcast, Scarborough said, “They give them this test and here we have the man running the most challenging job in government — not only in this country, but probably anywhere across the world — bragging about being able to identify a lion, a camel… and he says the last questions are, ‘tough, really tough.’”
For the record, one of the final questions — as Wallace pointed out — is counting backwards from 100 by sevens.