Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, October 06, 2023

Trump's 'Mental Acuity' Challenge Gets Exactly The Response You'd Expect

Donald Trump threw another fit on his social media website on Sunday, this time challenging a host of rivals to a “mental acuity test.”

Trump, who is refusing to debate any of his Republican presidential rivals but instead offered to debate Meghan Markle, is demanding that President Joe Biden, right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and others take a test of his choosing, at a place of his choosing.

“It will be a tough one,” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Nobody will come even close to me!”

Trump was triggered by a Wall Street Journal poll in which 49% said he was not mentally up for the job of president. (That number was 60% for Biden.)

“A few years ago I was the only one to agree to a mental acuity test, & ACED IT,” Trump wrote in response to the poll, which he claimed was “probably rigged.”

Trump hasn’t taken a “mental acuity test,” or at least hasn’t publicly revealed the results of such a test if he did. However, in 2020 he took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, which is used to check for signs of cognitive impairments that could be an indication of dementia.

Trump has often bragged of passing the assessment, and insisted that it was hard.

But it’s not supposed to be.

“It is supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment,” Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, who invented the test, told MarketWatch in 2020.

It asks the subject to complete tasks like identifying an elephant, or remembering and then repeating five words ― which, in Trump’s case, were infamously “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

Now, however, he seems to think passing the MoCA means he can challenge Biden, Murdoch, Murdoch’s sons, and the heads of The Wall Street Journal to the test of his choosing.

Neither Biden nor Murdoch has responded to Trump’s “challenge,” but the former president’s critics had plenty to say.

Original Article
Source: Huff
Author: Ed Mazza

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