'Daily Show' releases video mocking Trump for stumbling over his words
The Daily Show released a montage that includes clips of Fox News pundits criticising presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's mental acuity cut against clips of Donald Trump stumbling over words and struggling to read.
The montage includes one of the president's most recent gaffes, in which he struggled to pronounce the word "Yosemite" while reading it from a sheet of paper.
It goes on to show Mr Trump tripping over words and dates, referring to 2014 as "twenty thousand and fourteen" and frequently mispronouncing the words "Minneapolis" and "plasma."
The video is a response to the Republican attack line that Mr Biden is not cognitively fit to serve as president.
However, rather than showing clips of Mr Biden's cognitive health, it opts instead to argue that whatever trouble Mr Biden has with words, Mr Trump has as well.
Mental acuity has become a relevant question leading up to the 2020 US election.
During an interview on Fox News, Mr Trump bragged that he took and "aced" the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test, and challenged his rival Mr Biden to take the test as well.
Fox News is onto something here... he is NOT okay pic.twitter.com/PgFpVchkdR
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow)
The interviewer, Christopher Wallace, challenged Mr Trump, claiming he had also taken the test, and described questions that asked respondents to draw a clock or identify an animal.
Mr Trump pushed back on Mr Wallace and claimed the test increased in difficulty in its later stages.
The cognitive test made headlines again on Wednesday when part of an interview with Mr Biden was shared on social media in which he is asked by journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists if he had taken a cognitive test in light of Mr Trump's attacks on his mental abilities.
"No I haven't taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test?" Mr Biden asked in response to CBS's Erroll Barnett. "Come on, man. That's like saying you, before you got on this program, you take a test where you're taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?"
In June, Mr Biden was asked a similar question during a campaign event. He replied that he has "been tested and I'm constantly tested" regarding his mental ability.
"I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I'm running against," Mr Biden said.
While the MoCA test has become a flaming hoop for the candidates to jump through, the doctor who developed the test warned against its use as a political bludgeon.
Dr Ziad Nasreddine, the test's designer, said that the test shouldn't be difficult for anyone who isn't suffering from cognitive decline, undercutting the notion that passing the test is an especially high bar to clear for presidential candidates.
"This is not an IQ test or the level of how a person is extremely skilled or not," Dr Nasreddine told MarketWatch. "The test is supposed to help physicians detect early signs of Alzheimer's, and it became very popular because it was a short test, and very sensitive for early impairment."
The doctor said that while he doesn't want his test to become a weapon used by political parties to discredit their candidates, he did note that it was not unreasonable to raise concerns about the mental health of either candidate, as both are in their 70's.
"Dementia becomes more prevalent with age," Dr Nasreddine said. "Statistically, one person out of four could have cognitive impairment or dementia at age 75. So it is a pertinent question, and it's not surprising that this is becoming an issue this election."
