Donald Trump used a campaign-style visit to a Florida retirement community on Friday to boast that he had repeatedly 'aced' a Donald Trump cognitive test, insisting he remains in 'excellent' health even as medical experts warn his annual physical is overdue.

The appearance atThe Villagesmarked Trump's first major public event since an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner the previous week. The president travelled to the sprawling seniors' complex to promote new tax deductions for older Americans and upgrades to accessibility at the Social Security Administration, but the event quickly doubled as a public defence of his fitness for office.

The news came after weeks of questions over Trump's condition, fuelled by his age, bouts of online posting and a string of unexplained bruises on his hands. At 79, he is among the oldest occupants of the Oval Office, and the White House has yet to release his latest full medical report.

Speaking from the stage in Florida, Trump swerved from policy to personality politics, using Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom as a foil. He claimed, without offering evidence, that the 58-year-old governor was in decline and allegedly struggling with basic tasks such as reading and writing before pivoting to his own record.

'We should give [Newsom] a cognitive test. I took three of them,' Trump told the crowd. 'Aced all of them, by the way. You know, I'm the only president. I'm the only president to take a cognitive test because I don't think Obama could pass it. I don't. Didn't he get into Harvard with a C average? I don't know.'

The assertion that no previous president has taken such an assessment is unverified, and Trump did not provide documentation of the exams. Even so, he went on to describe one of the questions he said he had been asked.

According to Trump, the test began with a simple visual task. 'The first question is very easy. It's a lion, a giraffe, a bear and a shark,' he said. 'They say, "Which one is the bear?" And everybody says, "oh, 30 questions" Everyone says it's a very standard test, but very tough around those last 10 questions.'

The president's highly specific recollection of the cognitive test has become part of his regular political repertoire, used as a punchline, a credential and a weapon against rivals he casts as mentally unfit.

Trump's Florida remarks followed a prolonged posting spree on his Truth Social platform, where he revisited long-running feuds, from the conflict in Iran to his obsession withcognitive exams. In one post last week he wrote that 'anybody running for president or vice president should be forced to take a Cognitive Examination prior to entering the Race!' and argued such a rule would have prevented 'people like Barack "Hussein" Obama, or Sleepy Joe Biden, getting "ELECTED."'

He went further, claiming he had taken the exam 'three times' during what he described as his '('THREE!') Terms as President' and had 'ACED IT ALL THREE TIMES — An Achievement that, even on a single Exam, according to the Doctors, has rarely been done before!' None of those claims has been independently confirmed, and no supporting medical documentation has been released to substantiate the idea that perfect scores are as rare as he suggests. They should be viewed with caution unless corroborating evidence emerges.

Source: International Business Times UK