Has anyone publicly released verified IQ test results for Donald Trump?
Executive summary
No verified IQ test results for Donald Trump have been publicly released; multiple fact‑checks and archives find no credible primary record of an official IQ score made public [1] [2] [3]. Rumors and viral graphics claiming specific scores—most notably "73" or "156"—have been debunked by fact‑checkers and reporting that trace those claims to social posts, fabricated clippings, or historiometric estimates rather than an actual released test score [1] [4] [5].
1. The core fact: no public, verified IQ report exists
Investigations by established fact‑checkers and news outlets conclude there is no public record of a professionally administered IQ score for Donald Trump being released to the public; Full Fact and PolitiFact found no evidence supporting claims of an actual disclosed score, and Snopes likewise states the president’s IQ score has not been publicly released [1] [2] [3].
2. Viral "discoveries" and why they fail verification
Several viral items have purported to reveal Trump’s IQ—an image claiming a score of 73 discovered in a former New York Military Academy employee’s files is one recurring example—but those stories collapse on inspection: PolitiFact, Snopes and Full Fact traced the posts to unverified images or social‑media fabrications and found no archival or documentary proof that those test results are genuine [2] [3] [5].
3. Inflated estimates and historiometric speculation
Some widely circulated high‑score claims—such as an alleged IQ of 156—derive not from a test result but from speculative methods like historiometry or loose inferences from academic credentials; reporters and fact‑checkers point out these are estimates or errors in calculation rather than evidence of a released standardized test score [4].
4. Confirmed cognitive screening is not the same as an IQ test
The only cognitive assessment publicly discussed in mainstream reporting is the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a brief dementia screening referenced in reporting about medical exams; neurologists and coverage stress the MoCA is not an IQ test and is not correlated with standard intelligence tests, meaning any claim equating a "perfect" MoCA with an IQ score is misleading [6] [7] [8].
5. Privacy, records and the limits of public access
Experts note that even if a formal IQ test had been administered in school or medical settings, privacy laws and institutional policies typically prevent releasing such records without consent; reporting also documents that attempts to locate academic or admissions scores often fail because those records are private or never released, which helps explain why no verifiable public IQ score has emerged [6].
6. Motives, misinformation and the media ecosystem
The repeated emergence of contradictory IQ claims—ranging from memes to quasi‑news clippings—reflects partisan motives, the appetite for sensational narratives about a public figure, and the viral mechanics of social platforms; fact‑checkers explicitly flag that many posts amplify false or unverified documents because such claims attract engagement and reinforce preexisting opinions about Trump [2] [3] [1].
7. Bottom line and open limitations
Bottom line: no one has publicly produced a verified, primary IQ test result for Donald Trump; available reporting and fact‑checks consistently find the specific score claims unsubstantiated or misattributed, while acknowledging that absence of public release does not prove whether a private score exists—only that it has not been verified in public sources [1] [2] [3] [6].