I’m going to make a confession about Donald Trump. I have no idea what causes him to do this thing where he just boldly states that he never said something that he very obviously said before. There are at least several possible explanations, though.

The first is that he is just experiencing the ravages of age. Trump is exceptionally old for a Presidential candidate and they say the memory is the first thing to go. It’s entirely possible that Trump literally does not remember that he said that Japan should get nukes. I don’t know why someone doesn’t remind him that he said it before he goes out and claims that he never said it, but Trump isn’t surrounded by competent people, so that’s pretty much all the explanation you need.

The second is that he is just unaware of the fact that he has cameras on him all the time now, and that anyone with access to the Internet can easily go back and find him contradicting himself. So maybe the answer is not advancing dementia, but rather that he thinks he can get away with it because he’s just unaware that everyone has the technology to call him on his BS these days.

The third is that he assumes that no one will care, and that this assumption is based on how his followers to this point have behaved. Certainly, the 43% of Republican voters who voted for him in the primary have not shown any sort of willingness to be swayed with facts, or to care about the fact that Trump is a pathological liar, but Trump’s assumption that this will translate to the general election is a bold one, indeed.

Anyway, here is the clip:

I do have one correction to offer the CNN hosts: this isn’t a flip flop. It’s something completely different. He doesn’t really say that he doesn’t think Japan should get nukes. What he is saying is that he never said in the first place that Japan should get nukes. That’s not a flip-flop because Trump doesn’t actually take a contrary position on the question: it’s just a bald-faced lie that’s contradicted by the public record.

By the way, CNN? Well done with that chryon.