Trump brags he 'aced' three cognitive tests

Instagram teen accounts default teens into automatic protections for who can contact them and the content they can see. Explore teen accounts and all of our ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you proved it to you, would that frighten you? While now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Tonight on All In! We will make America affordable again. We will make America affordable. Make America affordable again. The president goes to a casino to mock a broken campaign promise. This election is all about affordability. Tonight, Senator Bernie Sanders on Donald Trump's disconnect with America. Right now, people are buying their holiday presidents. They're planning for... Look, don't be dramatic. No, no. Don't be dramatic. Then what we know about the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker in the Caribbean, plus the blaring warning sign for Republicans after last night's election win for Democrats, and why the president is lashing out again about those tests, he just keeps acing. It wasn't the brain because I took a good cognitive test, and I aced them. But all in starts right now.

Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Donald Trump's second administration has a lot of political vulnerabilities, especially right now. But by far the biggest is the issue that also, someone ironically, won him the election. That is the cost of living. People in this country, by and large, just do not like the way the economy is right now. They think things are too expensive. Poll after poll after poll shows this. Donald Trump's weakest issue is now the cost of living in the economy. Consumer sentiment, just to pull one statistic, is near record lows amid rising prices and Trump's tariffs. Today, the Trump appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve, a man that Donald Trump has come to despise, was announcing the interest rate cuts from the Fed of a quarter point. And as he did so, he said unequivocally what everyone knows, the tariffs are fueling inflation. Inflation has eased significantly from its highs in mid-2020, but remains somewhat elevated relative to our 2% longer-run goal, as inflation for goods has picked up, reflecting the effects of tariffs. And I mean, voters are lining up to tell anyone who will listen, whether that's reporters or politicians or just in the voting booth. They do not like this economy. They think it sucks. I mean, even this, even one Trump supporter who was asked by the Trump folks to speak at his Pennsylvania rally last night in support of the president's no tax on tips policy kind of gave away the game. Listen. I'm a single mom who has lived in Pennsylvania for the past 20 years, and I've been a waitress all my life, started when I was 15 years old. I've always enjoyed it and used to... and used to waitressing made good money. But lately, my money doesn't mean to stretch that far. Pretty much everything I make goes towards paying the bills with taxes these days, though. There's nothing in my paycheck. I mean, that's the whole thing, right? I'm working hard, and there's nothing left in my paycheck. That's the complaint. But the president of the United States does not seem to believe his own supporters concerns.

They have a new word, you know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability. And I can't say affordability hoax because I agree the prices were too high. So I can't go to a hoax because they'll misconstrue that. But they use the word affordability. And that's their only word. They say, affordability. And everyone says, oh, that must mean Trump has high prices. No, our prices are coming down tremendously. Just coming down right like. Coming down right like that. They're coming down tremendously right like that. Everyone, including possibly the president himself, understands that that message, don't worry, they're coming down. He's not going to cut it. I mean, we're seeing basically across the board Democrats overperforming in elections across the country in counties red and blue and states red and blue, including in special elections in Florida and Georgia last night. Voters are rejecting the status quo and Trump's record on the biggest issue of the day. Again, this is the one thing. We don't know a lot about politics sometimes. We're flying blind. This is the one thing that's clear as day. And Trump's big solution to this problem isn't any course correction on the merits or substance or policy. Nothing substantial. His court, what he's going to do is go to rallies with big signs claiming prices are down, which is exactly what he was doing last night with the classic wildly tangential Trump stuff. everything you've come to expect, right? There were the racist rants about Somalians and what he called asshole countries, gross smears of his political opponents, weird tangents on all sorts of stuff. At one point, Trump chided folks for buying, get this, too many pencils, and brought back his favorite riff about daughters wanting too many dolls. You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils.

Because under the China policy, you know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two. You know, they don't need that many. But you always need, you always need steel. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don't need 37 dolls. Pencils and dolls. Always pencils and dolls. It's the two items our president can name that Americans are buying and apparently are hoarding. Somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dollars, you know. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. But we're not talking about something that we have to go out of our way. I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs, that's 11 years old, needs to have. 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls. I'm just saying they don't need to have 30 dollars. They can have three. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five. Now, there's a lot that's clear from that, including the fact Trump has obviously no idea what any normal American buys. I mean, it's not just pencils and dolls. It's basic necessities like food and gasoline, holiday gifts. It's almost like the plight of the average American consumer is just a completely foreign concept to him. Right now, people are buying their holiday president's presence. They're planning for... Look, don't be dramatic. No, no. Don't be dramatic. Here's what I want to be. Here's what I want to do is help them. Don't be dramatic. He's incapable of relating to real people about prices. And instead, he's running defense for his terrorists, which are, as everyone knows, making things more expensive. The fact that he is still defending those tariffs proves Trump is not willing to change course here. He's married to them. Because he promised to bring prices down on day one explicitly. And you can argue, as Vice President J.JD Vance has, that that was a ridiculous proposition on its face. I agree. I knew at the time he couldn't bring prices down on day one. But it is what Trump said, and it is what he promised, and voters believed him, and it is the reason he won. Instead, he's done the opposite. He has made things meaningfully worse for people in two huge areas. First, with those terrorists, which are raising the prices of goods across America, and also, by the way, crushing American farmers who once again need a bailout from Trump's trade war for the second time in two administrations. And secondly, with health care, where Trump and fellow congressional Republicans refuse to take action to stop insurance premiums from skyrocketing for millions and millions of Americans. Today, the House Republicans are once again scrambling to come up with more than just concepts of a plan to bring the cost of health care down. They, of course, have no real solution. As they have had no real solution for the last 15 years, I have been covering them as they chase their tail around the tree. They could just do something easy. They could take the deal of Democrats tried to get them to take. They could just vote to extend the current subsidies that keep the prices lower and make everyone's life better, not just the Americans getting health care, but their own political prospects. I mean, they would almost certainly score some much needed political points along the way, but they are dead set against doing that. So instead, what we're going to get is Donald Trump.

taking his roadshow when they can rouse him out of the White House to various, I guess, hotel resort casinos to tell the people assembled there that actually everything is fine, don't buy so many pencils. Vermont Independent Center Bernie Sanders serves as a ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and he joins me now. Do you think this is going to work, I guess is my first question. I mean, I feel like I've watched politicians try to tell people to try to message their way out of economic problems before. And as far as I can tell, it does not have a great record. Hey, Chris, what I want to know are kids actually buying pencils at all, let alone 37 dolls for a beautiful little girl. It is really rather remarkable when you have somebody who is a pathological liar who thinks he can convince people that what they are seeing with their own eyes when they walk into a grocery store or when they pay their rent, when they try to send their kids to college, or when they're paying for health care. that their eyes are deceiving them. And of course, Donald Trump is right. So I think every time he opens his mouth telling the American people that what they are seeing is wrong, I think it makes people realize how far out of touch he is with reality. Now, what I will say is that the reality that he is living in. in fact, is a reality where the economy is doing very, very well for his billionaire friends. So we've got to be clear that while 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, he and his oligarchic friends have never, ever had it so good. So maybe, you know, that is the reality that he is looking at. Yeah, I do think the crowd at Mara Lago is pretty happy with the way things are going. I think the CEOs, the tech companies and the AI boom, you know, those people do seem happy, and I think you're right. One of the things that's so strange about this is... Look, the president really can't just control the general price level. There's no like inflation dial to turn in the White House. And it has been a bedeviling reality for president after president when prices are up. It's a hard thing to deal with. But there are these places that you can make policy interventions. And one of them right now is just an easy win that is there for the taking for the Republican Party and Trump, which is just extend these health care subsidies, take the issue off the table. score some political points, tell people you lower their car. It really does seem like a win, win for them if they would just take yes for an answer. Well, their problem is, and there are some Republicans who certainly agree with you and want to see the ACA tax credits extended for a year, two years, three years. The problem that they have is that these guys really do not believe in government intervention in health care at all.

We, as you know, are the only major country on earth, not to guarantee health care to all people. Every other major country has national health care programs, which are far more cost-effective than ours. But these guys have hated Medicare from the beginning, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. And it is very hard for them. to continue to support something like the ACA. Now, my own view is I strongly believe we've got to extend these tax credits. We cannot allow people to see a doubling in their premiums or a tripling in some cases. That is outrageous. But that ain't good enough. We have got to join every other major country on earth, guarantee health care to all people, and we've got to pass a Medicare for all single payer program. So it's not good enough in health care to just defend the status quo. We've got to do what other countries do and guarantee health care to all. There's some interesting political jockeying happening right now around these votes. So in the Senate, you know, the Senate Majority Leader promised Democrats a vote. I think that vote is probably going to be tomorrow on extending these tax subsidies. In the House... there's 14 or 15 Republican members in districts where, you know, they're going to be facing angry voters. They're not, their careers are imperiled who are saying they want some motion. But then because of your point, they ideologically are opposed to it. They've got to come up with something that they can vote for. So this is what the GOP proposal I think is going to be in the Senate tomorrow. It would do away with the enhanced tax credits. Instead, it would take that money for those tax credits, put it into... health savings accounts for those who purchase bronze level or catastrophic plans on the ACA Exchange, and they say this will help Americans pay for out-of-pocket costs, and they say, it's better if we turn Americans into more active consumers that are health care. What do you think of that? I think it's absurd and, you know, just totally bogus policy. Bronze plan has very high deductibles. It is if you get seriously ill, you are in deep trouble because you're not going to be able to have the insurance coverage that you need. They give you $1,000 or $1,500 that could pay for some minor health care needs. But it is nowhere near. protecting people who are going to say you've got doubling or tripling into health care premiums. There's also the question of the broader sort of affordability issue, right? So there's the health care and there's the tariffs. They've been saying the White House that even if the Supreme Court...

strikes down the tariffs, they're going to find some other way to do them unilaterally. They had to relent a little bit and try to reduce the tariff level on some grocery goods, which was a tacit admission that they're raising the prices of things. But do you see any appetite among your colleagues in the Senate to take this on if, for example, the Supreme Court does strike them down and offer some kind of window for Congress to reassert itself in this entire thing? Well, I would say that, and that is precisely the point. Congress has abdicated enormous amounts of responsibility to an authoritarian-type president who wants more and more power. Now, we can argue what is a sensible tariff policy or a non-sensible tariff policy, but that decision must be made by the Congress, not the President of the United States, acting unilaterally. And time and time again, what we see this president do. is act in a kleptocratic way to advance his and his family's own interest and to protect his friends, not the American people. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Thank you for your time, I appreciate, sir. Thank you. Coming up, everything we know about Donald Trump, the U.S. government seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and the Caribbean. That's next.

Tensions between the United States and Venezuela have been high since the Trump administration began launching fatal airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean three months ago and threatening a full-scale regime-change war. Today, there was another potential escalation. It began with a shocking report the U.S. forces had seized an entire oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Donald Trump then confirmed the news from the White House. As you probably know, we've just seized. A tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large. Largest one ever seized, actually. What happens to the oil on that ship? Well, we keep it, I guess. When does it go? What does it go to? Well, you have to follow the tanker. You know, you're a good newsman. Just follow the tanker. Follow it. Follow it. Get a helicopter. Follow the tanker. Is it true? I assume we're going to keep the oil. Earlier this evening, Attorney General Pambani released this video, which appears to show the U.S. Coast Guard taking control of the tanker. According to Pam Bondi, those troops executed a warrant to seize the ship because it was transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. David wrote as a senior national security reporter for MS Now, and he joins me now. David, what do we know about this seizure? It's a surprise. I think it's the first time the U.S. has ever seized a Venezuelan tanker in this way, and it's definitely an escalation. But I think it's part of an effort that's showing that Trump's attempt to pressure Maduro to leave power hasn't worked so far. You know, we've had a lot of coverage of these boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific that have left more than 80 people dead. But there's no signs that the Venezuelan military are sort of turning against Maduro. That's a key group that some people have thought might have turned on him. So this appears to be sort of an effort to pressure. Venezuela economically. But I just think there's growing questions about whether this whole effort is going to succeed in time or sort of drag on. And I'm not sure that that's what the president wants to have this dragging on and on, this confrontation with Venezuela. I want to read the full Pam Bondi explanation and asked you just an illegal question, which I don't know if we know the answer to. But she said today, the FBI Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Coast Guard with support a Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting for its terrorist organizations. The seizure completed off the coast of Venezuela is conducted safely and securely. Our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security prevent the transport of sanctioned oil countries, continues. What the president said, I guess, we'll keep it. I don't know what usually happens here, but I don't know. Can you just grab an oil tanker and take the oil?

There was a judge's order to seize this ship because it had been involved in past smuggling. But it's really not clear. There were reports also that this was maybe oil going to Cuba. And this is, again, now the Trump administration is following a court order to seize this ship. And at the same time, you have these questions about separately the boat strikes, which many legal experts say are illegal. And the defense appropriation passed the house today. And again, unusual bipartisanship here. Part of the bill was more information to be provided to Congress about these boat strikes that, you know, legal experts say are illegal. So it's just a very, it's not a clear answer because they're doing some things that just flout the law, these attacks on these boats. And then they're, you know, using a court order to seize this oil tanker. And again, I just question. This is not causing major cracks in the Venezuelan military, which is the key area of support for Maduro. So, you know, we'll just have to see where this goes, but there's no immediate success here. Maduro's not fleeing power as possibly some of the White House hoped. Oil, obviously, has been at the center of conversations about Venezuela forever. It's the major Western Hemisphere oil power and producer, along with the U.S. now these days. There was some reporting indicating that there had been backchannel negotiations with Maduro where the Trump administration wanted to kind of get cut into the Venezuelan oil business, and maybe they would fully normalize with Maduro. Those seem to have fallen apart. Scott Bessent the other day was seen saying, hey, don't worry about oil prices. They're going to really go low if something happens in Venezuela. It does seem that whatever is going on with this desire for regime change in Venezuela, that getting access to the oil there is front of mind for the Trump administration. Yes, I mean, that's what I've heard also from former officials and some current ones, that his main interest is in the oil. In the phone conversation, you talked about, Maduro offered up access to Venezuela oil, but he wasn't willing to leave power. And they sort of broke down at that point. But it does mirror a sort of, you know, 1800s gun blow diplomacy, the U.S. sort of dominating the Americas and trying to get hold of these massive oil reserves that exist in Venezuela. You know, this is, we'll just see what happens, but this is dragging on and on. It's a huge American naval presence in the Caribbean, but Maduro has not blinked. All right, David Rode, MSNAS now security correspondent. Thanks so much your time. Thanks. Still ahead. Takeaways from another night of big Democratic wins and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico joins me right here next.

Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out, we weren't alone. If someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture. My work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff, knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, the explosive and unsettling rise of prediction markets? I think legally the Supreme Court is going to ultimately decide how these things should be regulated. If there's a Democratic administration after Trump, I do think they're going to crack down. But you can see Kalshi already trying to get ahead of that by staffing up with former Biden people, with former Democratic senators, as a way of sort of signaling to the world. We're not just a Trump thing. The Trump family loves us. But look at all of our Democratic lobbyists. So they are. definitely staffing up and readying for that fight. That's this week on why is this happening. Search for why is this happening? Wherever we're listening right now and a follow. Well, we just saw another very positive election night for Democrats. In Georgia yesterday, Democrats managed to flip a state house seat in a special election in a district that Trump won by double digits last year. In Florida, Democrats won House District 90 by more than 20 percentage points. And in Miami, well, Dems saw one seismic flip. The first time in nearly three decades, a Democrat has won the race for mayor in Miami. Eileen Higgins beat Republican Emilio Gonzalez, who was endorsed by President Trump. She won 59% of the vote. Affordability has been a key issue throughout the campaign. Miami is one of the places where we had seen what was kind of billed as a permanent realignment of Latino voters away from Democrats towards Republicans and MAGA. And it's true. That was really the story in both the 2020 and 24 presidential races. You see those big red arrows in South Florida showing how much voters were moving Latino voters in that direction. Last night, that realignment seemed to fall apart. I mean, in one of the most famously conservative, Latino majority cities in the country, a Democrat defeated a Trump-endorsed Republican to win race from Miami mayor for the first time in nearly 30 years. And if that sort of thing is happening nationwide, those are the sorts of seats, all kinds of seats could be in play next year, including in the state of Texas, which has been a kind of white whale for Democrats for literally generations now.

Last night, I spoke to Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett about her bid for Senate in a Democratic primary that is quickly heating up. Joining us now is the other Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Texas State Representative James Talarico. It's good to have you here. Thanks for having me. I want to put these maps up. So I want to show the shift in Florida, which we just showed. This is Latino voters. And we know because of the area, right? So South Florida, obviously. big Hispanic population there. Now, this is the 2020. This is a 2020 election. Look at this 2020 voter shift in Texas, which was the other big part on the map that really jumped out. Those enormous red arrows there at the bottom in the Rio Grande Valley. That was really a place where this is, again, an election that Trump lost, right? The Biden won, but we saw that realignment moving. How do you think about... those voters and the voters of Texas, what you have to do to win this state that has been so impossible for Democrats to carry statewide? Well, I'm an eighth generation Texan. My family's been in the state since it was Mexico. And my family is from South Texas. My mom grew up in Laredo right there on the Texas-Mexico border. And... I get the sense that voters down in South Texas feel betrayed by both political parties. The National Democratic Party took communities like the Rio Grande Valley for granted for far too long. And so those voters were open to an alternative. Republican politicians came to town and made big promises. They promised to lower the cost of everything. They promised to put working families first. They promised to drain the swamp. And that sounded pretty good, including to some of my family members in South Texas who voted. for Donald Trump in the last election. But just one year later, everything is more expensive. Working families are falling further behind. And corruption in Washington is the worst it's ever been. Those Republican politicians made big promises, but they delivered more of the same. So they fumbled the ball. But that doesn't mean the ball is going to run itself into the end zone. That is incumbent upon us as Texas Democrats, incumbent upon our campaign, to make the case to these voters, to connect with these voters, persuade them. to join us in this effort to stop the extremism and corruption that we're seeing in Washington. You said the phrase, us is Texas Democrats. I've covered the Texas Democratic Party for a long time. And I've done reporting in Texas and know the state relatively well. Obviously, Quite famously, right? This is like the Chicago Cubs, right, before 2016, right? Like, it's one of the most famous sort of iconic losing streaks in politics. Haven't carried a statewide race since Anne Richards, right? If I'm not mistaken. It's now going on, what, 30 plus years. That's right. Why are you going to be the person to break that streak? Well, we're going to do it as a team. It's not going to be one person. When you zoom out and you look at statewide elections in Texas, they've gotten more competitive, not less, over the last 15, 20 years. When I was growing up in Texas, Republicans would win by 25, 30 points. Now they consistently win by single digits.

What is your view of that primary and what it means for what the race is going to be if you have someone who isn't a sitting center, say Ken Paxton wins and you can't sort of run against the guy who's sitting there in Washington? Neither John Cornyn nor Ken Paxton deserve the honor of representing our great state in our nation's capital. Both of them are far more interested in representing their billionaire mega donors than representing the people of Texas. They both sold us out. time and time again. Ken Paxton's crimes are well known. I was part of the bipartisan majority in the Texas House that impeached our corrupt attorney general. But you're not going to believe me when I say this. But I think John Cornyn may be even more corrupt than Ken Paxton because he was the deciding vote on that big ugly bill that. That big ugly bill that's going to kick millions of Texans off their health care. It's going to take food out of the mouths of hungry Texas children, all to give another tax break to his donors. We oftentimes think corruption is something that's illegal, like in Ken Paxton's case. But corruption is really just the betrayal of the public's trust. It is the abuse of your public office. And so John Cornyn has forfeited his right to represent all of us in our nation's capital. And that is what I'm running against. This is not a... a red team versus blue team thing. This is all of us coming together to demand that we have a government that works for us and not the ultra rich. You're in the Texas State House where you have to vote on legislation. The other woman who's running in this primary, Jasmine Crockett had on last night. She's in the House of Representatives, so she's voting on federal legislation now. I want to ask you about a vote today, the National Defense Authorization Act. It passed with a big, bright partisan majority, about half Democrats for, half against, a slight majority against. Jasmine Crockett had voted against that bill. How would you have voted today? Well, again, I got my hands full with the work that I'm doing in the State House. And I think anyone who knows me knows that I'm a policy wonk. dig into the details of every bill. I have deliberate conversations with stakeholders, with constituents, haven't done any of that work on this particular issue. But I will tell you that I get the sense across the state of Texas that people are deeply concerned with the direction of our foreign policy. You know, Donald Trump got elected, promising peacetime, and he has delivered the exact opposite. And I think this is actually going to be a major issue. in this upcoming race. And I look forward to articulating that vision for a safer foreign policy for people in Texas and across this country. Yeah, on the policy one thing, I will note the single stair thing for the housing nerds out there. It's a big, it's in. People should look it up. It's a great build. Basically, the short version is that Europe builds a lot of single stair apartment buildings. Our fire codes require two. It makes buildings more expensive. It's less space for them. There's a lot of people who think it's just as safe to build a single stair. It is. And most of the countries around the world do it. And we're now going to do it in Texas. All right, Texas state rep, James Talarico. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. So to come, why is the American president once again bragging about all the cognitive tests that his doctors are making him take? That's next.

This is a Monday.com ad. The same Monday.com designed for every team. The same Monday.com with built-in AI, scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Join MS Now Live in Texas for our biggest event yet with Rachel Maddo, Chen Saki, Michael Steele, and more. MS now live together in Texas. September 26th. Get tickets today at MS. dot now slash together. Donald Trump has had two annual physicals in six months, which, okay. He's also been seen repeatedly with swollen ankles and bruises on his hands that are sometimes covered with a Band-Aid. He's been having mental lapses. He's been falling asleep in meetings. Sometimes while Marco Rubio is singing his praises just inches from his face. And last night, the president seemed to admit that doctors in his life are now really quite concerned. So he did it in the middle of a long social media post that there is, declaring, among other things, that is seditious, perhaps even treasonous, to question his health, writing, quote, I have done something that no other president has done. On three separate occasions, the last one being recently, by taking what is known as a cognitive examination, something which few people would be able to do very well, including those working at the New York Times, and I aced all three of them in front. of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know. I have been told that few people have been able to ace this examination, and in fact, most do very poorly, which is why many other presidents have decided not to take it at all. Trump also said, of all his recent medical exams, quote, I do these tests because I owe it to our country. Philip Bump is a contributor for MS Now, who's been writing about Trump's effect on local elections. Adam Serwer, a staff writer for the Atlantic, where he's a new piece out on Trump's imperialism. We're going to talk about that in a second. They join me now. Philip, I got to start with you on this. I've read that last night a few times. It's really quite a journey the whole post. And again, with Trump, you never know, is he lying or not. But the part where he seems to be saying, That someone has had him take three cognitive exams that are time consuming and kind of boring, and he's doing them in a room full of observing medical personnel. Sure. Really did make me say, like, wait a second, did you just admit something pretty newsworthy and serious here? Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, especially because if you can think of these tests sort of as though they're like COVID tests, right? Because what they are is they are testing for the presence of something that is wrong, right? And so if you are taking these over and over again, it is because your doctors have concern that something may be wrong. It's one of the things I think is really striking about that passage that you just read is the fact that he talks about how he aced it and most people do poorly, which of course is not the case. Again, with the COVID test, you either pass it or you don't pass it. And it either tells you that you have COVID or that you don't. And his own doctor at the.

Apparently, maybe the most recent test, it's hard to know. But the one that he took back in April, his doctor released a document and said that his cognitive exam was normal, and he got a score 30 of 30. Because, yes, that's what it does. If you get lower than 30 out of 30, then you may have some sort of cognitive impairment. And everyone else who doesn't have cognitive impairment gets a 30 out of 30. And they ace it. And they are not special. And they are not amazing geniuses. They are just people who don't have cognitive impairment. But again, if you're taking these tests repeatedly, the question is why. Adam, let me ask you this. I'm of two minds about whether when you watch Donald Trump now, whether he's slowed down or gotten more addled or more discursive or more vicious or he hasn't. And I can kind of argue myself back and forth. I think it depends on when. In the rally last night, he seemed to me like not that different from years ago, but then there are some events I see where he is different. How do you perceive it? You know, I'm not a doctor, Chris. I just like to repeat, you know, these cognitive tests, they don't have grades. You don't ace a cognitive test. It either shows you having cognitive deterioration or it doesn't. You know, but so I don't know if he's, you know. cognitively impaired. I'm not a doctor. But I will say that it sort of doesn't matter to me. He's a man who tried to overthrow the United States government. He's corrupt. He's racist. And he was barred from the Constitution from running again until, you know, the Supreme Court rewrote it to nullify the 14th Amendment prohibition on insurrectionist holding office. So, you know, the fact that he's cognitively impaired, I think that you are. The possibility that he's cognitively impaired is almost beside the point. I think where it becomes relevant is to what extent he is aware of what his aides are doing because he's surrounded by so many extremist advisors that it's possible that he's not even aware of some of the things that they are doing with the authority of the president in his name. That's a really good point because one of the things that we keep seeing happen, and again, this is one of these things where is he lying or not, who knows, Philip, on the pardons, right? Hey, you pardoned this guy, this crypto dude who, you know, it seems like had sort of cut your business in on a special deal. What do you think? Never heard of him. You pardoned the president of Honduras who got convicted for, you know, smuggling drugs or facilitating the smuggling of drugs in the U.S. I have no idea what you're talking about. Now, at one level, it could be like an alibi. Like, I don't know what's going on. Or it could be, to Adam's point, like, it really does make you question sometimes. Is there just some sort of the staff is running things and they're putting things in front of him to sign? Yeah, but this has always been the case, right? I mean, Donald Trump has always been a guy who defers to everyone else on the things that he thinks are boring. He likes going around the White House. He likes flying an Air Force One. He likes going out on the golf course. He doesn't care about health care policy. He doesn't care about any of these things. He doesn't care about the nuances of those pardons. He just knows that someone asked him and he said, sure, right? Like, he just doesn't care about this. This is why even when there was this big debate over Project 2025 last year, it was all rather moot, whether it was the campaigns or not, simply because we knew that all he was going to do is hire.

all those people anyway, and they would do what they wanted, because he doesn't care about these things. So, look, Adam's exactly right. You know, it is the case that we should be wondering the extent to which he is aware of what he's doing. I think that we would all agree that we don't necessarily think that's, you know, a plus as opposed to minus. But I also think that it's important to note that this has always been the case with Donald Trump, and it may just be that during the second term, he's trying less to be a real president than he did the first time around. I want to play. You mentioned him being racist, which I think is inarguable and is demonstrated day after day after day. He's been particularly disgusting recently, particularly talking about Somali Americans and Somalians generally. Last night, he had this strange moment where there was this, you know, famous reporting that in a meeting back in the first term that he had referred to asshole countries that were the countries we were taking people from, that was reported out. The White House denied it. There were Republican senators who were in the meeting who said it was a lie, never, never. Last night he sort of came clean mischievously and said it. Take a list. And I say, why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can't we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? Let us have a few. From Denmark. Do you mind sending us for you people? Send us some nice people. Do you mind? But we always take people from Shimalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. Pretty textbook, Adam. Yeah, look, most Americans are descended from poor Europeans who came from poor countries, whose own countries at the time were struggling and poor. Number one, number two, the most educated subgroup of immigrants in the United States. is Nigerian immigrants. So this idea that, you know, if the immigrants don't come from Northern Europe, which is racist on its own, they can't contribute to American society is false. And there's a word for saying, if you come from this country, you're bad. That word is bigotry. So this expression, I mean, you notice Mr. Persians for Trump in the background there was a little quiet during that sequence. But look, he's been open about this, you know, for years. And I think there's a sort of denial that's been happening in the press about what this man believes, in part because they're afraid of offending the very large number of Americans who support what he says and agree with him. But the reality is that this. is an extremely racist ideological view of the world. It's wrong. And if you applied it to, you know, most of the countries that Americans today are descended from, they wouldn't have been let in either. Yeah, I've been doing some research recently on 19th century Sicilian immigration in the U.S. And you would not believe the things they said about Sicilians at that point, but they were essentially equivalent to what the president is saying here. There's also something about last, so that before he played that clip, he has a moment where he's

He stops and he's sort of thinking about should I admit that I said this thing. And this to me was also interesting about this moment, Philip, because it was, you know, there was, when that was reported, there was, of course, denials. Here's Dick Durbin talking about it. He says, I'll never forget hearing Donald Trump's racist asshole countries comment in 2018 Oval Office meeting about immigration. Tom Cotton and David Purdue claimed Trump didn't say it and accused me of lying. The truth comes out. And obviously, this is not. news to anyone watching this program that Donald Trump lies. But it did strike me as a useful little peek behind the curtain for everyone that this kind of thing is happening all the time. And their denials are worth exactly what you think they are. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I remember that scoop. I was at the post at the time as the Washington Post scoop by Josh Dawsey. And yeah, I mean, everyone knew that, of course, he had said this thing. Like, anyone who is cognizant of what Donald Trump says in general is going to understand that this is going to be something he says. You know, I do think this is important. Look, you know, it's easy to be sort of cynical and assume that none of this is going to get through to his base, and it very well may not. But this is also occurring at a time when Donald Trump is talking about how horrible CNN is and how horrible these other news outlets are and how they can't be trusted, how they're full of lies. You know, you read what he was saying. about the New York Times. Over and over and over again, it has been demonstrated that when people are saying things critical of Donald Trump, they are saying those things because they are accurate, right? This is a reflection of the real world that Donald Trump is trying to keep at bay. And it is useful for him, exactly as you said, to say that no, actually, yeah, they were right all along, because it does at least bolster the idea that in this fight between reality and serreality, reality actually does have the advantage of being true. Philip Bump at Adam Serwer. Thank you both. Appreciate it. We'll be right back.

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