A claim that Donald Trump‘s IQ was 73 when it was tested during his first year at New York Military Academy is doing the rounds. The score is very low and indicates mental retardation. The claim was declared false by Snopes in 2019 as the newspaper clipping based on which the claim was made was not a real newspaper clip. It’s the same newspaper clip that is doing the rounds this time as well.
Then how much is Donald Trump’s IQ? The answer is not known as he never released his IQ score though he took jibes at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and all other opponents by calling them low-IQ persons.
As X was flooded with that old clip claiming that Trump has an IQ of 73, Republicans took offence and said only Democrats with an IQ of 73 could fall for such fake news debunked long ago. “We know Trump doesn’t have an IQ of 73 because he isn’t a Democrat,” one X post said.
“Any idiot would know that an IQ of 73, would literally make him severely mentally handicapped and living in a group home. But the left is willing to buy anything that reinforces their beliefs,” one wrote on X.
“You would need an IQ of 73 to believe that anyone with an IQ of 73 could do anything, forget being a billionaire president,” another wrote.
What is the source of this viral claim?
A debunked newspaper clipping with a quote from some William Askew Jr is the source of the claim. It said the document was in the process of being authenticated in 2019. William Askew Jr discovered it as he was cleaning his late father’s apartment. “Dad was the school counselor at NYMA from 1955 to 1985. He didn’t administer these tests, but he was in charge of collecting them and sending them to the grading office,” Askew said.
Snopes.com in their 2019 fact check said the news article did not appear anywhere and it was purely fictional.
