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CNN hosts fell flat on their faces desperately trying to prove a cognitive ability test President Donald Trump recently bragged about acing is a joke.
Doctor Marc Siegel and Dr. Ziad Nasreddine defended Trump on Friday after the commander-in-chief attained a perfect score.
Earlier in the week, Trump discussed a portion that focused on memory retention, noting he did very well on it. This, like many of Trump’s words, triggered a viral reaction from the Left.
“It was 30, 35 questions. The first questions are very easy. The last questions are much more difficult. Like a memory question. It’s like you’ll go ‘person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ So they say could you repeat that? I said, yeah. ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ Okay, that’s very good. If you get it in order, you get extra points,” President Trump said.
The president’s response — “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — was widely mocked on the internet and on cable television by CNN hosts Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, though their segment didn’t go as planned; at one point, Lemon held up a copy of one page of the test and confused a rhinoceros for a hippopotamus.
A day later, however, the cognitive test ensnared another CNN victim: Host Erin Burnett.
In an interview with test developer and neurologist, Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, seemingly with the intent on proving that the test was easy, Burnett got a different response altogether.
Noting that some were calling it “a very easy test,” Burnett continued: “Again if you don’t have any cognition or memory issues, is it? I mean, how would you describe it?”
(Source: MRCTV)
The test was designed to be difficult, the neurologist said, adding that “it could be somewhat hard for somebody who is normal.”
Especially the five-word recall,” he added, which Trump specifically mentioned. “And most patients do not get the five words. Most normal people would not get the five-words after five or ten minutes. Most of them get 3.7 words. So, it’s not that easy to go through the whole testing.”
“Actually, I think he’s referring to the five-words question because it is challenging. Some people get only two out of five, three out of five. It’s not everyone who gets five out of five or 30 out of 30 like I mentioned before. Only 10 percent of normal individuals get 30 out of 30,” he said later.
On Friday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson played the clip of Trump’s response to Siegel, noting that the five words were now being made into political clothing that would become “the pet rock” of the 2020 campaign.
(Source: Fox News)
Following that part of the interview, Trump goes on to say that the job of president requires “sharp” people, a likely reference to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s increasingly obvious decline in mental acuity, adding that foreign leaders a president has to face are mentally up to the task.
After introducing Siegel, the medical contributor said the Trump White House treated him and the Fox News team “with respect.” He went on to note that he “returned that respect” by not interrupting President Trump as he provided details of his cognitive test and added context to it.
“He was talking about something that was probably from the Montreal Cognitive Test,” Siegel said, lamenting the fact that the entire episode has been shamelessly politicized by the president’s opponents.
“I thought this is a teaching moment, this is going to lead to a discussion of cognition, of thinking, of people over the age of 70 years old. Can they run for president? Can they pilot a plane? Can they be a chef? Can they still be a surgeon? Can they be teachers if the schools come back? An open discussion, right?” Siegel said.
“Instead, no we got back to the usual political quagmire. We have late-night comedians mocking it. Now we have shirts. And again, the president comes under attack. I was so disappointed with that and I felt that political division ruled instead of the question: How do you assess cognition and function in the elderly? Really important.” Siegel continued.
“So I have a prescription for America this weekend. For once, let’s not attack each other for the week based on their positions and trying to destroy each other,” he added. “Let’s go for two words…respect and kindness.”
Earlier this week, Carlson played the clip of Lemon and Cuomo yucking it up over the cognitive test where Lemon fails to properly identify one of the animals, then follows up with guest and top East Coast conservative radio host Howie Carr.
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Jon is a staff writer for BizPac Review with 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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