It's Not About Smart, It's about Old

Donald Trump has rightly been ridiculed for stating that he is "like, really smart," and is a "very stable genius." 

Most critics examine the usage of the word "like," which completely undermines the "really smart" in many ways. In particular, it makes him sound like a Valley Girl or stating that he is not actually smart, but just a facsimile of smart.

For years now Trump's mental acuity has been in question. Every time the question comes up he trots out the same old nonsense about having a high IQ and going to a fancy college. This time he said:

"I went to the best colleges for college," said Trump, who holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. "I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out, made billions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people, went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard, ran for president one time and won."

Look at this quote: I went to the best colleges for college. Smart people do not talk that way. That's something a stupid, inarticulate and confused person would say. It's also patently false: UPenn and Wharton are simply not the best, by any measure.

And it's totally irrelevant. Trump went to college 50 years ago. His IQ test was decades ago. That has no bearing on his knowledge and mental fitness today. I took calculus in college 40 years ago, and got all A's. I remember nothing of calculus. It would be ridiculous for me to brag about having the best grades in calculus now, because it has no bearing on my current mathematical capabilities.

The question isn't how smart Trump was 50 years ago, it's how smart is he today? How well can he focus? He well can he absorb information from his staff? If you compare his speech patterns today to the speech patterns he evinced 20 years ago, it's clear he's suffered a marked cognitive decline.

And it's not just Trump, it's any old person. He's 71 years old, an age when parts of the brain start undergoing rapid shrinking:

For example, the gray matter of the human frontal lobe shrank an average of about 14% between the age of 30 and 80, and the gray matter of the hippocampus about 13% over the same period. But shrinkage of white matter was even more severe: The white matter of the frontal lobe shrank about 24%, similar to the white matter volume decrease in most other brain regions measured.

Moreover, unlike the gray matter, which showed a more gradual shrinkage over time, the decline in white matter was most precipitous between the ages of 70 and 80. So although the average decline in the frontal lobe was 24% at age 80, it was only about 6% at age 70.

Brain shrinkage came to my attention the other day when I read that Alex Trebek of Jeopardy fame, who is 77, had brain surgery for a subdural hematoma, probably caused by a fall:

The elderly also are at increased risk for the condition simply due to old age. This is because, as we age our brains shrink slightly, creating a space between the brain and the skull. This space put stress on the veins in the brain and increases their risk for tearing and bleeding

Finally, Trump is genetically predisposed to Alzheimers, which killed his father.

One of the first complaints I registered about Trump's run for president was that he was too old: he was the oldest president at inauguration. Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are also too old to be president. And Joe Arpaio's run for Senate, at age 85, is a total joke. His brain is the size of pea (admittedly it started out that way).

Congress can't pass laws setting a maximum age for being president, because the Constitution sets the requirements.

But Congress can demand that Trump undergo physical and psychological evaluations by independent physicians and psychiatrists to determine how much cognition he has lost, as well an MRI to scan his brain to see how much shrinkage has occurred, and to look for other signs of deterioration (yeah, that's a thing).

Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan suffered from a stroke and Alzheimers late in their terms, and others ran the presidency. All partisan animus aside, there are numerous indications that Trump's mind is not firing on all cylinders, and the nation would be best served by determining whether Trump's mental issues are due to impending senility or are simple personality defects.

Trump claims to have a very good brain. So why doesn't he prove it: have him take an IQ test. A cognition test. A short-term memory test. A reading comprehension test. A brain scan. But he won't, because he'd fail.

The best way to shut up a braggart is to make him prove his boasts.