Mensa Calls President’s Bluff, Offers IQ Test To Trump And Tillerson

WASHINGTON, DC — American Mensa, the high-IQ society whose members include the smartest of the freaky smart, is calling President Trump’s bluff in the latest turn in “moron-gate” — that is, lingering questions about whether Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did or did not call his boss a moron, perhaps with a modifier that rhymes with what Tillerson did in a weird news conference last week when asked if he had denigrated Trump — in general, ducking the question.

The geniuses at Mensa America offered to give its membership test the two men to settle who is smarter after Trump said in a Forbes interview that he thinks the whole dustup is “fake news,” his favorite phrase to describe news coverage that is unflattering, but said if Tillerson did say it, “I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests.”

“And I can tell you who is going to win,” Trump told the magazine.

After the Forbes interview was published Tuesday, the political news site The Hill took what appears to be an ensuing brain bowl to a new level by asking Mensa, which describes itself as “an international society whose only qualification for membership is a score in the top 2 percent of the general population on a standardized intelligence test,” if the organization would give its admission tests to Trump and Tillerson.

Also See: Huckabee Sanders: Trump Was Joking About Tillerson's IQ

Why, yes, Charles Brown, the group’s communications director replied, “American Mensa would be happy to hold a testing session for President Trump and Secretary Tillerson.”

Though Brown wouldn’t say if other presidents or Cabinet leaders are members of the elite group, he did say several have reached career milestones that would have qualified them for Mensa admission. For example, President Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, Jimmy Carter worked as a nuclear engineer and George H.W. Bush was a military pilot.

“Each could have encountered standardized academic tests (LSAT, GMAT, Miller Analogies) where qualifying scores would have propelled them into Mensa,” Brown told The Hill, noting that admissions tests aren’t the only avenue for geniuses to become members of Mensa.

Trump has frequently boasted about his high IQ, though he’s never revealed what it is, and has bristled at suggestions that former President Barack Obama’s IQ is higher. In fact, CNN reported, Trump has bragged about his IQ at least 22 times, including these unforgettable tweets:

Escalating tensions between Trump and Tillerson reached a zenith last week when NBC News published an explosive report alleging the secretary of state was on the verge of resigning last summer and had called the president a “moron.” The day the report came out, Tillerson said in a hastily called news conference that he had never considered resigning and seemed to make a point of calling the president “smart,” but when a reporter asked if he had disparaged the president by calling him a moron, the secretary of state said only that he wasn’t going to wade into the weeds over “petty stuff.”

In a followup news conference, a State Department spokeswoman said Tillerson never called Trump a moron and doesn’t use language like that.

What reportedly pushed Tillerson to the brink wasn’t Trump’s defense of white supremacists whose rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer turned deadly, nor the president’s taunts to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, calling him “Little Rocket Man” and insisting Tillerson is “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with him. Rather, NBC said, it was an address at a Boy Scouts of America rally that turned into a raunchy political speech. Tillerson once led the Boy Scouts organization.

In the Forbes interview, Trump bragged about his successes in his first nine months in office, saying more legislation had been passed by Congress during his honeymoon phase than had been accomplished under any previous administration.

“I’ve had just about the most legislation passed of any president, in a nine-month period, that’s ever served. We had over 50 bills passed. I’m not talking about executive orders only, which are very important. I’m talking about bills,” he said.

Despite the hyperbole, Trump has failed to gain traction on campaign promises to immediately upon taking office repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which has floundered despite Republican majorities in both chambers, and reform the tax code. The Senate is expected to take that up next week, but a growing rift between Trump and Republican senators threatens that, too.

President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Rex Tillerson after Tillerson was sworn-in as secretary of state, in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 1, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images/Getty Images News)