Goals Framing Your Life - The Monday Morning Memo

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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.’

A high-profile example came in mid-July, when Trump claimed his uncle, the late professor John Trump, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, at MIT.

Trump recalled: ‘I said: ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John? Dr John Trump.’ I said: ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said: ‘Seriously, good.’ He said: ‘He’d correct – he’d go around correcting everybody.’ ‘But it didn’t work out too well for him.’

The problem is: that cannot possibly be true. First, Trump’s uncle died in 1985, and Kaczynski was only publicly identified as the Unabomber in 1996. Second, Kaczynski did not study at MIT.

‘The story makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s told in a very warm, reflective way, as if he’s remembering it,’ Segal said. ‘This level of thinking really has been deteriorating.’

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- Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, Aug. 3, 2025. Harry Segal is a senior lecturer in the psychology department at Cornell University and in the psychiatry department at Weill Cornell Medicine.

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