Trump boasts that he has the least dementia of anyone who's ever not had dementia

Overlooked during Monday's Oval Office crime-o-rama, the one in which America's convicted felon strongman and El Salvador's version both insisted that they were powerless to return a wrongly kidnapped asylum seeker even if the Supreme Court demanded it because something-something don't wanna, was The Criminal's usual braggadocio about his alleged physical studdery and mental omnipotence.

Many people in the American public have begun to point out that Donald Trump has been showing significant signs of dementia, in his public appearances, and somehow The Criminal appears to have heard those allegations despite the herculean efforts of his staff to present him with only good news and adoration.

Fear not, says the man who has repeatedly waxed philosophic on the "old-fashioned" word "groceries," a word that refers to "a bag with different things in it." There's never been anyone who has less dementia than he does.

Oh yes, this is definitely a real thing that happened. He was given another cognitive exam to test for irregularities in his cognitive functions and the doctor, a big guy with tears in his eyes, finished administering the test and looked up to say "Sir, I've never seen anyone get that kind of, that was the highest mark."

Or, as Trump clarified: "They said to me, "Sir, would you like to take a cognitive test.' I said 'Did Biden take one?' No. 'Did anybody take one?' No, not too many people took 'em. I said, "What about ... what about ... Obama, did he take one?' No he didn't take one either. I said "Let me be the only one to take one, whatever, I've actually taken them three times already, I like taking them because they're sort of, they're not too tough for me to take."

Trump is almost certainly talking about one of the several standardized tests used to test for age-related loss of expected mental abilities. Initial questions test whether the patient is aware of who they are, where they are, what the date is and similar facts. From there, a patient might be asked to draw an analog clock face—do they know where each number goes?—identify a set of pictured well-known animals, like a giraffe or an elephant, and remember a list of words.

It is not an "IQ" test, as Trump still seemingly believes it to be, and passing with a perfect or near-perfect score is expected if there's no underlying problems to be found. The notion, then, that one of Trump's doctors was shocked because he's "never seen anyone" do as well on the test as President Criminal managed to do is ... nonsensical. If it's the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, you're expected to get 30 points and if you get less than 26 it may indicate problems. A scenario in which President Criminal's physician has "never seen" anyone get such a masterful score is only possible if:

1. Some dude snuck in who isn't a real doctor.
2. The doctor really is a real doctor, but has never given anyone a cognitive test before handing one to the Gilded Felon.
3. Trump's dementia is so severe that he imagined this whole scenario after his brain forgot the details of how it really went down.

Or he could just be lying. Or Trump's "doctors" are the same sort of sycophantic bullshit machines that Trump has surrounded himself with in every other capacity, and out of self-preservation they really did feign shock and excitement at how masterfully Dear Leader performed when asked to draw a clock or identify a rhinoceros. Holy crap, Dear Leader, nobody can identify a rhinoceros like you can identify them. It's almost a shame that you're a seditious convicted felon authoritarian strongman; you could have become a professional rhinoceros identifier, traveling the world to consult with high-profile clients who wanted to know if something was a rhinoceros. Or a professional clock drawer—did you ever consider that? Someone in charge of drawing all the clocks?

At any prior point in time, the natural inclination would be to presume Trump was lying. Seeing the new intensity with which Trump's entire inner circle keeps fighting to see who can crawl farthest up the man's colon, however, I'm personally thinking it's that last scenario that's most likely. Trump assembled a group of absolute bootlickers to play at bein' his doctors, and in addition to the now-traditional assertions that Donald has the physical height and weight of wiry professional basketball players we're also going to be hearing that the man is an unparalleled genius when it comes to passing standardized dementia tests.

Oh-ho, his doctors will announce. On the test to draw a clock face, Donald drew a clock that showed 37 hours rather than the usual 12. Nobody "has ever seen" a cognitive test taker draw a clock with so many numbers; Dear Leader gets double the usual not-dementia points for his creation.

Look at this, the doctors will say: When asked to identify a rhinoceros, Donald announced that it was called a "watabaloo." The doctors all agree that this is by far the better name for the rhinoceros, so from now on it will be called that. Double the points again.

On the hardest test, the one in which Donald was asked whether he remembered the five words he was supposed to remember, Dear Leader announced "No, I'm bored with this now." Ingenious! Not only were those the five words we had asked for, he added a sixth as a bonus word! Twenty million Brain Points!

So ... sure. You know what, I'm actually going to believe Donald when he claims that he took a dementia screening test that no previous president dared take and got the highest not-dementia score his doctor had ever seen. I'm sure whoever has been designated Dear Leader's official physician has been hand-picked for their groveling abilities—that person might actually be Marco Rubio wearing a white coat and fake mustache.

Meanwhile, however, Trump continues to exhibit the classic signs of dementia.

Mmm-hmm. It was the only way to buy groceries, in fact. "That'll be five tariffs," the grocer would say before handing over a bag with different things in it.