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Why Trump Won’t Let His Famous Dead Uncle Rest in Peace

Donald Trump keeps using his relation to a famed MIT professor as proof of his intelligence. But as The New Abnormal team points out—smart people often have dumb relatives.

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Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

After confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama with Joe Biden on two separate occasions last month, former U.S. President Donald Trump apparently tried to put any questions about his cognitive abilities to rest last Saturday.

Speaking at a rally in Las Vegas, the 77-year-old claimed to have aced a cognitive test given to him by his doctor, Ronny Jackson, during his presidency. He went on to say that this should not be a surprise to anyone, because he shares the “same genes” as his uncle—famed MIT physicist Professor John Trump, whom he has proudly mentioned at previous campaign events.

“I said to him, you know, Ronny, I’d like to take a cognitive test. I never heard of it before, but whatever it is, I like tests. I’ve always liked tests. Tests are very interesting,” Trump told the crowd. “You know, I had an uncle, he was the longest serving professor, Dr. John Trump, in the history of MIT. Same genes. We have genes. We’re smart people. We’re smart people. You know, we’re like... racehorses, too. You know, the fast ones produce the fast ones, and the slow ones, well it doesn’t work out so well. Right?”

There’s a problem with that argument though: as The New Abnormal’s co-host Andy Levy points out, having a smart relative does not make you a genius.

“Good God. I know a lot of people who are smart and who have really dumb siblings,” he said.

“What a fucking idiot,” The New Abnormal’s Danielle Moodie said. “And also, why is everything so interesting? Like, do you know what would be interesting—him reading a thesaurus. Everything is so interesting, the tests are interesting. ‘Oh, it was very interesting. The question was interesting. Everything is so interesting.’”

“You know that he hasn’t taken a fucking test, right,” she said.

Trump has bragged about excelling in a cognitive test called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which he claims he took during his time as president, saying it required him to identify drawings of animals, including a whale. However, Ziad Nasreddine, the Canadian neurologist who invented the test, said the assessment has never once included a drawing of a whale.

Plus! Danielle Moodie has a thought provoking chat with DEI expert Denise Hamilton on her new book Indivisible: How to Forge Our Differences into a Stronger Future.

Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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