The marbles are trickling out of the bag

Mark Sumner correctly explains the purpose of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and why it is bizarre to brag about "passing" it. It's not an intelligence test, it's a screening tool for dementia. If it doesn't signal dementia, doctors call that a "negative result," not "passing." There aren't any difficult questions -- the whole point of it is that anybody who is not suffering from incipient dementia can deal with all of the tasks. (Not all of them are questions, per se.)

It is not very sensitive, as we  call it. That means that many people with cognitive impairment or relatively moderate dementia will test negative. What is concerning is that doctors have evidently seen fit to administer this to the Resident more than once. What is even more concerning is that he does not understand what it is or what the negative result means. That is all the evidence we need of something gone haywire in the cerebral cortex. Since he has always lived in an alternate reality, does not take in new information, and his personality disorder has always included self aggrandizement, it's hard to say if this is really a sign of further cognitive decline. But to me it seems sufficiently ridiculous that I don't think he would have been quite that gonzo a couple of years ago.

In fact, I suspect that on some level he knows he's losing it and this is a denial strategy intended more for self-reassurance than public consumption. Unfortunately I wouldn't put much hope in his increasing incapacity since Stephen Miller, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are running the government. If anything it makes him an easier tool to use. He is becoming steadily less presentable in public and that might have an effect on some voters. Until January 21, however, it just makes the situation more dangerous.