Thursday night’s debate left the political class abuzz about the comparative performances of two aging presidential contenders: A sitting president -an elderly man with one of the most stressful, 24/7 jobs in the world, suffering from a cold, who was off his game and sounded as tired as he undoubtedly was, after cramming for his bout with his opponent while juggling crises international and challenges domestic, all on top of campaign strategizing and appearances; and a former president -an elderly man fresh from alternating bouts of golf and the campaign rallies that clearly energize and feed his ego (note: no debate cramming involved). The former spoke with muted voice, clearly showing fatigue and malaise, well off his game; the latter was rested, alert and stentorian, full of piss and vinegar.
The forgoing describes form (style and presentation). Popular interpretation of that style and presentation has been that President Joe Biden was seen as exhibiting signs of cognitive impairment that matched his apparent increase in age-related physical frailty, while former President Donald Trump’s style and presentation were perceived as reflecting an astute, robust and energetic candidate whose apparent mental acuity and energy were well up to the job.
But let’s set form aside. Form is window dressing, and while it’s nice to look at, it can be -and often is intended to be- deceptive. Let’s look at substance (content and accuracy) instead. In this case, content and accuracy paint a quite contrarian picture of the two candidates.
The best way to make the comparison is to discard the video and voice and look at the transcripts of what they actually had to say:
President Biden, with few exceptions, actually answered the questions he was asked, usually without being re-asked. Former President Trump did so perhaps half the time, frequently after being re-asked, perhaps twice.
President Biden answered a very few questions inappropriately, speaking to matters off topic, unresponsive to the question. This was interpreted by many as a cognitive wander. Former President Trump answered many questions inappropriately, clearly deviating into what he wanted to say instead of what was being asked, leading to frequent redirects.
President Biden’s answers were direct, with factual statements that were truthful, and the vast majority were accurate. Former President Trump’s answers in many cases deviated off-topic, and where facts were alleged, they were largely not only wrong but were demonstrable lies.
Not just lies, but malicious, outrageous and damnable lies.
Or were they?
It has become apparent that Donald Trump wasn’t lying, because he actually believes his own lies.
He was confabulating.
Confabulation[i] occurs when a person cannot -or through dissociative amnesia, will not- recall the past, and instead contrives a narrative that he or she substitutes as a memory and actually believes. This is common among those suffering cognitive impairment, those having Korsakoff Syndrome (a deficiency dementia that erodes the long-term memory) and among schizoid and narcissistic psychopaths.
There has recently been considerable speculation about whether Trump has some form of cognitive impairment, and there is considerable consensus among the psychiatric community that he is a narcissist -if not, in fact, a malignant narcissist[ii].
While cognitive dementia confabulists convince themselves that their fantasies are real in order to fill their memory holes, their motivations are benign, or at worst, only to avoid embarrassment. Those demented from schizophrenic or narcissistic psychopathologies are deliberate and self-serving. They systematically dissociate inconvenient memories and substitute new ones that serve their ends of the moment. This practice can become so embedded and automatic in the narcissist that the dissociation and confabulation come automatically and all but unconsciously[iii].
On June 27, Donald Trump released a barrage of lies intended to dazzle the audience with his brilliance while (as the saying goes) he baffled them with his bull$hit. Perhaps the most amazing and dangerous thing was the profoundly apparent conviction with which he denied demonstrable reality regarding his own recorded statements and actions, belting out a barrage of untruths and misrepresentations, taking credit for policies, actions and legislation accomplished by and under President Biden himself, even accusing the sitting president of offenses he had himself done -not once or twice, but repeatedly. President Biden was obviously flabbergasted at the statements he was confronting, while his facial expressions of shock, horror and aghast appeared to leave him all but speechless -something the media and critics elected to attribute to limited mentation on his part.
While Donald Trump has never been intimate with the truth, what he displayed that night demonstrated that his pathology has significantly advanced since he left office. His 3-plus year campaign to convince the nation he won the election, his fight to convince the public, politicians, and courts of law that he did things he didn’t and didn’t do things he did, living in contrarian defiance of the realities that lay in evidence all around him may have pushed his mind into confabulation default mode in order to preserve the illusory self that all narcissists live with.
But that flurry of untruths -aside from themselves substantively and clearly disqualifying the former president from holding the highest office in the land- pale in significance compared to the obvious ease and conviction with which he said them. It seems apparent Donald Trump literally believes the fictions he speaks. He is a narcissistic confabulator. He is pathological. Beyond the obvious dangers such unrealities pose in the mind of a presidential candidate is the danger that the apparent sincerity in his presentation will convince some significant fraction of those not closely tracking politics and government.
Even worse, imagine having a president in office whose reality is not what lies before him, but whatever his pathology sees as serving his purpose. Even as Trump’s history suggests that his life has been dedicated to serving the self, for a president to actually perceive reality as whatever he wants it to be would portend national catastrophe.
Why does the specter of such a president seem to harken Ancient Rome’s Nero?
Yes, we saw a demented presidential candidate Thursday. It wasn’t Joe Biden.
[i] https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08010037
[ii] https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/demented
[iii] https://www.heraldopenaccess.us/openaccess/dissociation-and-confabulation-in-narcissistic-disorders