Now you know: ‘ABCs test’ for presidents isn’t real

Giving new meaning to a Presidential Fitness Test, a recent Instagram post says that each U.S. president is subject to a pop quiz during their term: singing the ABCs.

"Did you know that every time a president is elected to serve a term a person is assigned to randomly select a day throughout their term to get the president to sing their ABCs," a narrator says in the video. "This is in order to make sure the president is still able to think properly. Fun fact: Joe Biden was the first president to fail in the last 100 years."

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Watching the Instagram post’s full video makes clear this is a joke, complete with a purported quote from Biden delivered in a voice that sounds like the president crossed with Wooderson, Matthew McConaughey’s character in the movie "Dazed and Confused."

"Hey, I was too faded," the voice that is supposed to be Biden — but isn’t Biden — says. "I had just hit a blinker and my ass was fried man, I mean, I didn’t know p comes before q like when the f--- did that happen? This is some bulls---."

Featured Fact-check

Threads posts

stated on October 23, 2024 in a Threads post

Kamala Harris’ statements about Trump invoking Adolf Hitler were based on a “debunked hoax from The Atlantic.”

Presidents aren’t required to undergo annual health exams, or publicize the results of those exams, but it’s become customary since then-President Richard Nixon did,

In February, the White House physician said Biden received his first physical exam in a year and a half and declared him a "healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency." 

As you might expect, we found no evidence to support the claim that a White House staffer is tapped to choose any day in a president’s term to get the commander in chief to sing the alphabet song, nor that Biden was the first president in 100 years to fail. 

We rate that claim Pants on Fire!