Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh spent a lot of time interviewing former President Donald Trump for his new book about The Apprentice — but despite all the time they spent together, he claimed on Monday that Trump didn’t remember who he was.
Setoodeh appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss his book, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass. After describing the access he has had to Trump during the time NBC’s The Apprentice was on the air as well as in the years following Trump’s presidency, Setoodeh shared a stark claim about the ex-president.
Referring to Trump’s gaffe over the weekend when he stated that President Joe Biden “should take a cognitive test” because “I took a cognitive test and I aced it.” He later twice referred to the doctor who administered the cognitive test that he aced as “Ronny Johnson.” His real name is Dr. Ronny Jackson, now a congressman representing Texas:
[T]he other thing that I think is really interesting, because I really got to know Donald Trump post-presidency, and I got to see what he was like. And over the weekend, he was talking about how Joe Biden needs to take a cognitive test. Joe Biden, you know, “isn’t all there.” Donald Trump had severe memory issues. 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. We spent an hour together in 2021, in May, and then a few months later, I went back to the White House, I went back to Trump Tower to talk to him about his time in the White House. And I said, he had this vacant look on his face. And I said, Do you remember me?” And he said, “No.” He had no recollection of our lengthy interview that we had, and he wasn’t doing a lot of interviews at that time. So I think that the American public really needs to see this portrait of Donald Trump, because this shows what he is like and who he is and who he has always been.
Watch the video above via MSNBC.
