He Got "Extra Points"?

Haltingly repeating the phrase “person, woman, man, camera, TV” to show off his memory, the president claimed he left doctors in awe. https://t.co/FEvQ7AndRA

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 23, 2020

I'm afraid that as long as Trump can't leave his cognitive test alone, I'm not going to be able to leave his cognitive test alone, because this guy has the nuclear codes and ordered Homeland Security to invade Portland and teargas hippie moms over graffiti. The constant rehashing of a test regarding basic mental function isn't the GRE's. It's not Stanford-Binet. It's about whether you're "all there" and can do stuff like live on your own. And this reminds me a bit of Mary Trump's warning in her book that we can think of Donald Trump as having lived an institutionalized life. He's been fail-proofed like a little toddler to keep him from (mostly) jamming forks in the electrical sockets.

Except for now--he's been given extraordinary power, by people (like William Barr) who think that the presidency should wield extraordinary power. This multiple-bankrupt. This grifter. (And the grift goes on, apparently.) He's fucked up the economy because he's fucked up the COVID-19 response. He's fucked up trade, foreign policy, race relations, divided the country as no one could, and since he's running for re-election, I guess he thinks there is still oodles of up-fuckery he can still engage in. But don't call him stupid.

Trump's been rabid for years about his IQ, his real good brain, his genes, his being a "stable genius". I tend to think you don't have to do that much explaining, unless you've really behaved in a way that begs that question (like a dog!). So, what's the deal?

On one hand, it could be a sign that he isn't entirely a Dunning Krueger case, and realizes almost how godawful dumb he might be. On the other, it might just be a sign of a paralyzing sense of his own mortality--having lost his Dad, the person who had done the most to shape his life, to dementia, maybe it makes sense that he needs to consider his wits on a different level of sharpness. He's boasting that he's fit to duel with the reaper, in part, to psyche himself up.

But trying to understand his fixation is just me, an orderly person, trying to sort his apparent dysfunction into some rational frame. The thing is, he says these things out loud where all the people can hear. At some point, regularly drawing attention to whether your own damn head works fails to be strategically sound. Claiming one's doctors were surprised and gave extra points on a basic cognition test that now was administered because Trump asked for it, so, on purpose, because so there! feels really sketchy, the more he keeps embellishing it. It's like he's digging a hole into the center of his own broken-ass brain.

Not that I think he should stop talking about it, of course. Ye gods no! I really feel like at least fifty percent of his coronavirus briefings should be about how well he did on the cognitive test, fifty percent should be about how well America is doing versus all the other countries in terms of testing and cases and hospitalizations and all, and then another fifty percent should be about how not a racist president he is and totally like Abraham Lincoln. Which is 150% of a coronavirus briefing, but of course--Trump should go for the extra points, right?

Person, woman, man, camera, tv. Things that were right in front of Trump when he extemporized. He was making up his experience of the test in the retelling. As people who don't recall things sometimes do.