Which documented claims about Donald Trump's IQ have been debunked by fact‑checkers and what evidence did they cite?
Executive summary
Fact‑checkers have repeatedly debunked specific widely circulated claims about Donald Trump’s IQ—most notably that he scored 73 on an IQ test taken at the New York Military Academy and that he scored 156 (or other very high fixed numbers)—concluding that those numeric attributions lack credible evidence or are based on fabricated artifacts; evidence cited includes image forensics, archival searches, alumni testimony, and the absence of any primary reporting to support the claims [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The “73 IQ” meme: what was claimed and how it unravels
A viral image purporting to be a newspaper clipping claiming a 73 IQ for Trump while at New York Military Academy has been traced to a manufactured meme with no footprint in credible press archives, and fact‑checkers found that the clipping does not exist outside the image itself—Full Fact and Snopes explicitly concluded there is no evidence Trump scored 73 and that the “newspaper” was fabricated [1] [3].
2. The evidentiary basis fact‑checkers relied on
Investigations relied on reverse image searches, archival checks, and source verification: fact‑checkers could find no original newspaper article corresponding to the clipping, identified the photo of “William Askew Jr.” as a stock image, and reported alumni and NYMA‑associated sources saying IQ testing was not conducted or the named actors did not exist—concrete gaps that led PolitiFact, Snopes and Full Fact to deem the claim false [2] [3] [1].
3. The high‑IQ claims and their weaknesses
Conversely, some social posts claimed Trump had an exceptionally high IQ (e.g., 156); Snopes examined the provenance of such charts and showed that the underlying historiometric studies and summary charts do not translate into a verified, individual IQ score for Trump, reclassifying figures like “156” as misinterpretations or overreach from aggregate estimates rather than documented test results [4].
4. Why fact‑checkers emphasize absence of primary documentation
Across these fact checks the central evidentiary standard was simple: Trump has not released verifiable IQ test records and the viral artifacts (clippings, photos, or charts) lack primary sourcing; fact‑checkers repeatedly highlight that image circulation and reuse on social media do not constitute credible documentation, so absence of contemporaneous reporting or archival records is decisive [1] [2] [3].
5. Alternative viewpoints and limits of what can be proven
Some outlets and commentators note that historiometric methods can estimate relative cognitive measures from achievements and records, producing ranges that have been cited online (one chart gave roughly 145–149 in reanalysis), but fact‑checkers caution those are estimates, not substitute for individual standardized test results—fact‑checking organizations document this distinction and say such estimates do not validate specific posted scores [4].
6. The motives and mechanics behind the misinformation
Fact‑checkers’ reporting points to manufactured memes and miscaptioned images as the drivers of false IQ claims; the 73 meme appears to have been designed to provoke political ridicule and spreads because it looks like a newspaper clipping even though it has no archival source, and fact‑checkers flag that such posts are often recycled across platforms for partisan effect [2] [3] [1].
7. Bottom line and outstanding unknowns
The verifiable bottom line: claims that Donald Trump definitively scored 73 or 156 (or other precise scores widely shared online) have been debunked as unsupported by primary evidence; however, because Trump has not produced verifiable IQ test records, fact‑checkers are limited to refuting the specific artifacts and interpretations presented and cannot assert a different, verified score in his stead [1] [3] [4].