Last week, we talked about Ramin Setoodeh’s new book about Donald Trump, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass. Setoodeh is Variety’s editor-in-chief, meaning he’s not a political journalist or part of the beltway culture. He spends most of his time interviewing celebrities and talking about movies. His interest was on the entertainment/pop-cultural influence of Trump, which is probably why Trump and his team agreed to give Setoodeh six interviews over the course of one or two years. What Setoodeh reveals is something beltway hacks refuse to notice or note in any way: Trump’s cognitive decline has been steep over the past six years or so. We saw it when he was in office, but it’s gotten dramatically worse post-insurrection.
Donald Trump’s cognitive health is making headlines for the second time in a matter of days. This time, the issue was raised by an author who interviewed him extensively for a new book. Variety editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh — who wrote Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass — claims that Trump had trouble remembering him, despite the long conversations they shared.
During a June 17 appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Setoodeh said he began interviewing the former president for his book in 2021. He added that he spoke with Trump, now 78, six times.
“Donald Trump had severe memory issues,” Setoodeh claimed. “As the journalist who spent the most time with him, I have to say, he couldn’t remember things. He couldn’t even remember me.”
Setoodeh said that they spoke for an hour in May 2021, and when they reunited a few months later for a follow-up conversation, Trump had a “vacant look on his face” and seemingly didn’t recall the first interview. Setoodeh noted that the former president wasn’t doing many other interviews around that time. The author emphasized the importance of voters knowing where Trump’s mental state might be.
“I think that the American public really needs to see this portrait of Donald Trump,” Setoodeh continued, “because this shows what he is like and who he is and who he has always been.”
Responding to Setoodeh’s claims, Trump 2024 communications director Steven Cheung went on the offensive, denying that his boss has memory problems. “President Trump was aware of who this individual was throughout the interview process, but this ‘writer’ is a nobody and insignificant so of course he never made an impression,” Cheung told PEOPLE in a statement. “After recognizing the importance of The Apprentice and its significant cultural impact on a global scale, this ‘writer’ has now chosen to allow Trump Derangement Syndrome to rot his brain like so many other losers whose entire existence revolves around President Trump.”
“This ‘writer’ is a nobody and insignificant so of course he never made an impression.” Yeah, Ramin Setoodeh is an important entertainment journalist who came at Trump from a different angle, which is what got him access to Trump and he got to see what Trump is really like, up close and personal. The issue is not that Setoodeh is drawing attention to Trump’s very obvious cognitive decline, the issue is: why aren’t political reporters talking about it constantly?
Ramin Setoodeh, who interviewed Donald Trump six times for his new book on “The Apprentice,” says the former president told him Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016, despite how she died two years earlier. pic.twitter.com/Xa1h468vqK
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 19, 2024
Setoodeh: Trump seemed to think he still had some foreign policy powers. There was one day where he told me he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan even though he clearly didn’t pic.twitter.com/e17xnz3okg
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 19, 2024
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.