What reason causes Trump to rewrite facts in his own tales that aren't true? We've seen this happening so much. Do you think it's confabulation, lying, or both? Confabulation is the spontaneous production of false memories. Confabulation typically occurs due to brain damage or health conditions that affect the brain, such as dementia. Confabulation is different from lying. The person who confabulates has no intent to mislead anyone or give them wrong information, as they are not aware that the information they are giving is false. People with dementia may display several symptoms of confusion or altered perception of reality. Confabulation is an example of this. It occurs when a person with dementia creates new memories of things that never actually happened, or they alter memories of events that occur in their day-to-day life. Confabulation is a symptom linked not only to dementia but also to several other brain illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and brain injury. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/confabulation-dementia No one's memory is 100% percent accurate, but some people make many memory errors. They believe in the accuracy of these faulty memories and can be convincing when talking about them. This is what scientists call confabulation. Some brain conditions can cause these errors in memory. Confabulations are usually autobiographical, involving people misremembering their own experiences. Sometimes they place experiences in the wrong time or place. They may wrongly recall other details, large or small. Occasionally confabulations have little basis in reality. Confabulation is caused by brain damage or poor brain function, but researchers are unsure which parts of the brain are at fault. The frontal lobe or the basal forebrain may be involved. Confabulation occurs with several brain disorders. Confabulations can be either provoked or spontaneous. They're provoked if they occur in response to a question. The person may feel compelled to answer even if they don't know what to say. They're spontaneous if they're offered voluntarily. Spontaneous confabulations are usually less believable and might be fantastic or bizarre. Provoked confabulations are common in early Alzheimer's. Spontaneous confabulations can become a serious problem if the person with Alzheimer's acts on their mistaken beliefs. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-to-know-about-confabulation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536961/ Confabulation is sometimes called “honest lying,” because the person doing it genuinely believes what he’s saying, even if it is obviously and patently false. A person confabulates when they are telling completely invented stories that don’t provide them any particular tangible benefit. In other words, it’s not like lying to try and get out of a speeding ticket. Confabulation isn’t misremembering a date or forgetting something. The mistakes of memory we are all subject to become confabulation when people remember false information in vivid detail — detail so vivid and complete that people who don’t know otherwise often believe what they are hearing is true. In older people, confabulation is one of the clearest early signs of dementia. The day you witness someone confabulate is often the day you are forced to admit to yourself that a beloved parent needs help, and that all the little slips and oddities you’ve been seeing can no longer be rationalized away. If you aren’t comfortable with labeling this as dementia, that’s fine. But there is no question that the president — the man tasked with making critical life and death decisions for both the country and the world — is struggling with mathematical concepts, has vivid “memories” that are not rooted in reality and has an increasingly foggy grasp of past events that did happen. That’s not a medical diagnosis. These are facts we can see for ourselves and we all know. https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2025/08/02/confabulation-dementia-and-trump/
There are so many examples to choose from, but here's a recent example.... Trump claimed the US gave $60m “two weeks ago”. He added: “You really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything. “Nobody acknowledged it, nobody talks about it and it makes you feel a little bad when you do that and you know you have other countries not giving anything, none of the European countries by the way gave – I mean nobody gave but us.” Trump seemed to not realize or remember that other countries have given money to Gaza – the UK announced a £60m ($80m) package in July, and the European Union has allocated €170m ($195m) in aid. And the Guardian could not find any record of the US giving $60m to Gaza two weeks ago. In June, the US state department approved a $30m grant to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a group backed by Israeli and US interests which has been criticized by Democrats as “connected to deadly violence against starving people seeking food in Gaza”. The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s claimed $60m donation. Segal said another characteristic of Trump’s questionable mental acuity is confabulation. “It’s where he takes an idea or something that’s happened and he adds to it things that have not happened.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/03/donald-trump-mental-fitness
although he does make up stories like how his uncle taught the Unabomber which one might conclude is him confabulating, he’s also a pathological liar with a low IQ so he lies constantly about everything and the lies are always extra stupid like his uncle telling him about how he taught the Unabomber even tho his uncle died over a decade before the Unabomber’s identity was ever discovered, nor did he ever attend the college his uncle taught at
I think you guys are over analyzing this he’s a salesman. it’s his job to push his agenda forward, and so far he has been successful to an all time historic level. Whether it is straight up lying or grossly reframing the status quo. It works, therefore he keeps doing it.
