Never Mind

The other day, I was thinking about Trump’s claim about Willie Brown, a helicopter and Kamala Harris – and how it’s been refuted by Willie Brown (who wasn’t involved) and Nate Holden – who was the person on a helicopter with Trump, though refuted all the insisted on Kamala Harris even being brought up.  Yet Trump continued to insist his story was true, furious at the New York Times for writing an article that denied it all, insistent it was true, insistent he had manifest records, threatening to sue, insisting he was right – despite all the other people involved in the story absolutely refuting it.
 
Yes, he was on a helicopter that had flight trouble and was with a Black politician.  But everything else was totally wrong, and explained why it was wrong by those involved in his tale, yet he insisted, insisted he was the one who was right. 
 
What I couldn’t figure out was why, in the face of all that, Trump would keep insisting it was entirely true, that it was Willie Brown and that they had talked about Kamala Harris.  Insisting, insisting, insisting.  In part, that’s Trump being Trump, unable to admit he’s wrong about anything.  In part, it’s mixing up two names from long ago.  But the core points of the whole story were shown to be wrong, and Trump just kept being so continually insistent that he was right and everyone was wrong was just…almost too weird, even for Trump. 
 
Then something clicked in familiar to me.
 
I had a relative, we'll call him Pat, who had Alzheimer’s, a type of dementia. At the point of this story, he was conversant, but limited.  Periodically, I’d ask if he wanted to watch a ballgame.  We’d turn the game on, and the conversation would go basically like –
 
“I’ve seen this game.”

“Well, no, Pat, this isn’t a replay.  It’s a new game.”
 
“No, I’ve seen this one.”
 
“Really, that’s not possible.  It’s live.  The game is on right now.”
 
“I’ve seen this game before.”
 
“Oh," I'd smile, "Well, okay.  So...what happens in it?!”
 
“I’ve seen it already.”
 
Eventually, of course, we just watched.  Interrupted occasionally with a random, “I’ve seen this.”  And it happened with most ball games.  No matter how much it was pointed out what was reality, he was insistent this fantasy he had in his mind – that clearly overlapped with other games he’d seen – was absolutely, positively real.  Almost comforting to him, a touchstone he felt he could recognize.  He insisted on it.  Insistent.
 
And it occurred to me that that might be a part of what was happened with his Willie Brown and Kamala Harris story.  Not the whole reason behind it – Trump being Trump is always a core reason for everything.  But perhaps there is an aspect to even early dementia where the person thinks of something that is familiar, that has a tangential overlap with the truth, but is actually a totally fantasy and that becomes drilled into the person’s mind as absolutely real, no matter how much others explain it’s not.  And so the comforting fantasy is insisted, insisted, insisted on – and all others, they’re the ones not remembering correctly, they’re the ones who are wrong.
 
I have no idea.  It’s not my field of expertise.  It’s not my training.  And as I said, there are probably a lot of things involved.  But since so many doctors for whom dementia is their area of expertise and say they seen signs of early dementia, perhaps it’s not unreasonable to see an overlap of what I experienced and Trump’s rock-solid, unmoving instance that what was fantasy not only was true, but had to be true for him.  Even at an early stage in his dementia. 
 
To be clear, it’s not the “getting the story wrong” that struck me about this – that happens to everyone – it’s the unswerving instance that something all others and all evidence of reality says it’s not at all true is, is, is, and must be, true.
 
As readers here know, I’ve been writing at length about Trump cognitive issues that many psychologists and psychiatrists have said in articles and books appears to be early dementia.  And his recent speeches and interviews and outrageous claims, his instance that his crowds are the biggest in history, and Kamala Harris’s crowds are just AI, have reinforced that, to the point of starting to publicly concern even MAGOP officials. 
 
A friend sent me this article the other day from a medical publication, Stat, its banner noting “Reporting from the frontiers of medical and health.”  The article deals with the issue, dealing with several doctors, experts in the field, who have looking at patterns of Trump’s speech -- at the heart of which is one particular doctor who has been studying Trump’s past speeches and comparing how the linguistics have changed over time, and how that fits with others who have cognitive issues.
 
I can’t link to the article, since a password is required.  But the title says a lot, “Trump keeps losing his train of thought. Cognitive experts have theories about why”.  But it’s worth mentioning that the Trump common pattern of suddenly veering off topic and going into a totally different, almost unrelated subject is not something usual, but something that actually has a medical name.  As the article notes –
 
“This shifting from topic to topic, with few connections – a pattern of speech called tangentiality – is one of several disjointed and occasionally incoherent verbal habits that seem to have increased in Trump’s speech in recent years, according to interview with experts in memory, psychology and linguistics.”
 
That’s far above my pay grade.  But it’s good to know that the patterns in Trump so many have seen stand out as not normal because…they’re not normal.
​

​