On “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Thursday, Carlson unveiled part of a new interview with Donald Trump that was performed by Marc Siegel — who Carlson referred to as “our show’s doctor.” Naturally, the subject of cognitive tests came up, since Trump has been talking all week about one he took a while back.
It was a strange conversation all the way through, but of particular interest is that Trump claimed near the end of the conversation that no one questions his mental competence anymore, “even the enemies.” He didn’t specify who those “enemies” are.
“You need stamina. You need physical health and you need mental health. And because you have so much fake news, every once in a while you’d say, first they’d say, ‘He wants to take over the world. He’s going to take over the world. He’s a dictator.’ The next day they’ll say, ‘He’s crazy’. The next day they’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s incompetent’. Then the next day they’ll say something,” Trump said as he started in on the topic.
“So the last time I was at the hospital, probably a year ago, a little less than a year ago, I asked the doctor, I said, ‘Is there some kind of a cognitive test that I could take? Because I’ve been hearing about it, because I want to shut these people up. They’re fake news, they make up stories.”
Trump then went on a lengthy tangent about the test, bragging about how shocked the doctors were that he was able to remember five words in order: “person, woman, man, camera, TV,” he said, multiple times to Siegel.
And then as they approached the end of the segment, Trump made his claim that nobody is saying those things about him anymore.
“We have to have somebody that’s sharp. If this person isn’t sharp — because I can tell you President Xi is sharp. President Putin is sharp. Erdogan is sharp. You don’t have any non-sharp people that you’re dealing with, and we can’t have somebody that’s not a hundred percent. So what I did is that, when the, you know, it’s a public test and he said, you know, ‘If you take this test we may have to reveal it,’” Trump said the doctor told him.
“I said, ‘that’s all right. I mean, is it tough? Tell me about, never heard of it. And I got a perfect mark. And the doctors were, they said very few people can do that. Very few people get that. You understand, it’s not that easy! There are other questions tougher than what I just did. But it’s not that easy. But as soon as they announce my score and that test, all the stuff went away about me, ‘is he competent?’ Remember when they were talking about the 25th Amendment and nonsense. And they said wow. And even the enemies, they don’t say that anymore, but they do say it about Joe Biden.”
Trump ended this segment of the interview by saying that Biden needs to take the same test.
On Wednesday, the LA Times published a column questioning Trump’s mental competence.
You can watch this portion of the interview above or the full segment below: