What did Donald Trump do today?

He got extremely confused about a major political event that happened to him.

Trump is serving as a massive anchor dragging down Republicans' chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives in the upcoming elections—and that's coming from Republicans themselves. The situation is so dire that political forecasters now think Democrats have a decent chance of picking up four seats retaking the Senate outright in what, going by the map, should be an awful year for them. 

That has focused attention on the Supreme Court, and whether two of its elderly Republican justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, might choose to retire soon rather than risk having Trump's picks to replace them blocked by a Democratic-controlled Senate.  In an interview that aired this morning, Trump had this to say:

Look at — happens to Justice Ginsburg. She was not exactly a young woman. The election was taken. They had a Democrat who could’ve appointed a liberal justice — and the liberals do stick together, that’s one thing about those justices, they stick together like glue, not like the Republicans. But she decided she was going to live forever, and about two minutes after the election, uh, she — went out, and I got to appoint somebody.

Ginsburg died of cancer in September of 2020, almost four years after Trump took office. Trump's over-the-top reaction to "learning" of her death from a reporter, in which he performed shock and insisted "you're telling me now for the first time"—although he clearly was aware—became something of a meme. He then ignored her deathbed plea for him to wait until the election was settled before naming a replacement.

Instead, his administration rushed to appoint Amy Coney Barrett before the November election, doing in barely six weeks what would normally have taken at least four months. That should stick out in Trump's mind for reasons that go beyond the political: the White House ceremony celebrating her nomination was a COVID superspreader event that likely gave Trump the near-fatal case that saw him hospitalized days later.

But Trump's version today has the timeline off by a matter of years, at least. The closest thing to an explanation seems to be that he was conflating her death with the death of Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, during Barack Obama's last full year in office. Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace him, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to vote on him, giving Trump the opportunity to name his replacement after the 2016 election.

Trump clearly wasn't lying. His version of the story isn't embellished to make him look good; it was just wrong on basic facts he lived through as President.
 

Why does this matter?

• Confusing elements of different stories is called confabulation, and it is not a sign of good cognitive health in the elderly.