CNN is getting more and more desperate when it comes to trying to find ways to denigrate and criticize President Donald Trump. The network, which used to devote hours every day to the theory that Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, has been reduced to aiming…well, quite a bit lower these days. At least the Russia story (had it been even slightly true) had international intrigue, nefarious characters, and treason at the heart of it.
Devoting segments to Trump’s boast that he passed a cognitive assessment test just doesn’t carry the same weight.
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Alas, CNN has proven this week that they can humiliate themselves on the small stories just as well as they can with the larger ones. On Wednesday, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon tried to embarrass the president by showing viewers how simple it is for an adult to pass the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test. They failed miserably when they couldn’t correctly identify a rhinoceros, however.
Perhaps hoping that she could succeed where her colleagues failed, host Eric Burnett decided to skip any test of her own cognitive abilities and instead interview neurologist and test developer Dr. Ziad Nasreddine. Her transparent hope: That Dr. Nasreddine would tell viewers that the test is ridiculously easy and that only a buffoon would brag about passing it. Then they could all have a good laugh at Trump’s expense before moving on to reminding Americans, again, how hopelessly racist they are.
But things did not go according to plan. Burnett tried again and again to get Nasreddine to undermine Trump for being proud of his test score, but the doctor not only resisted her efforts, he said that there were plenty of people with excellent cognitive function who got tripped up on certain parts of the exam.
“Some are calling it a very easy test,” pressed Burnett. “Again, if you don’t have any cognition or memory issues, is it? I mean, how would you describe it.”
But Nasreddine again held his ground, insisting that the exam was designed to be challenging. “It could be somewhat hard for somebody who is normal. Especially the five-word recall. And most patients do not get the five words. Most normal people would not get the five-words after five or ten minutes. Most of them get 3.7 words. So, it’s not that easy to go through the whole testing.”
Burnett, whose expression betrayed her growing frustration with the doctor, tried a different tack: “And why would you take it multiple times? Would that be sort of over time to see if you’re seeing a decline in memory? As you talk about this is as kind of a gauge for Alzheimer’s?”
“It’s not uncommon to have the test repeated once a year or every two years if the person is expressing some concern or the family is concerned,” Nasreddine said.
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Or, you know, if hack psychiatrists were regularly appearing on national television to diagnose you with dementia.
Another big fail from CNN.
As for the rest of the talk about how simple this test is, why don’t we have Mr. Biden take it and release his results? It ought to be a cinch, right? We want to know if the Democratic candidate for president can correctly identify a rhinoceros. We’re betting against it.
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