Earlier today, it was revealed that the President of the United States challenged his very own Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to an IQ test to prove who was the smartest of them all. If you thought that was strange, well things just took a turn for the surreal.
As reported by The Hill, American Mensa – the US chapter of the high IQ society – said that they would “be happy to hold a testing session for President Trump and Secretary Tillerson.”
Charles Brown, the organization’s communication director, declined to state if any former Presidents had already joined this fairly exclusive group, but he hinted that a few of them – including George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton – may have come across similar IQ-testing examinations in their earlier lives and that they were likely to be eligible to become members.
To this offer, we have but a simple question: Who wouldn’t pay good money to see this IQ showdown?
Tensions between Tillerson and Trump have been building for some time, but it appears that they’ve reached a new zenith with this strange foray into IQ scores.
After an NBC News story alleged that the Secretary of State called Trump a “fucking moron” in a private setting, the President subsequently sat down for an interview with Forbes, where he touched on the issue.
“I think it’s fake news. But if he did [say] that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests,” he told the magazine. “And I can tell you who is going to win.”
Trump is perennially obsessed with his IQ, something which changes continuously over time. It’s a fairly limited measure of smarts, but Trump has nevertheless spent years boasting about his own personal score – which he’s never actually revealed – and challenging other people to take a test with him.
Back in 2013, for example, he challenged Mark Cuban, a frequent critic of his, to an IQ battle, and he once referred to former Republican Presidential candidate challenger Jeb Bush as someone who’s “got no IQ… same as his brother.”
He seems to have taken umbrage, on multiple occasions, to the notion that former President Obama may have a higher IQ than he does.
In any case, events this strange deserve a pertinent quote from Stephen Hawking, who, when asked back in 2004 by the New York Times about his own IQ, responded that “people who boast about their IQ are losers”. Quite.
