Author says Trump bragged about Joan Rivers voting for him — even though she died in 2014

19 June 2024

The author of a book about how former President Donald Trump used reality TV to catapult himself to the White House is offering revealing new details about Trump's state of mind.

During an interview with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Ramin Setoodeh — author of the forthcoming book Apprentice in Wonderland — talked about how, in his six interviews with Trump after he left the White House, the former president seemed absentminded and scatterbrained.

"He goes one story to the next, he struggles with the chronology of events, he seems very upset that he wasn't respected by certain celebrities in the White House, and then he's go to a story about The Apprentice," Setoodeh said. "There was some cognitive questions about where he was and what he was thinking, and he would sometimes, at times, become confused."

Setoodeh went on to say that Trump would earnestly believe things that weren't true. Not just his continued belief that he was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election, but also things that were legitimately impossible. The author recalled how, in one interview, Trump legitimately believed that comedian and TV personality Joan Rivers supported him in 2016.

"He confidently told me and declared that Joan Rivers voted for him when he ran for president," Setoodeh said. "And Joan Rivers died in 2014. So she would have not been able to vote for Donald Trump."

"On some days, I have the feeling he has no idea whom he's even talking to; at our second meeting, he tells me he couldn't remember sitting down with me, even though it was only a few months earlier... It was a little bit like Groundhog Day," he added.

In an official statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung denied Setoodeh's characterizations of the former president, and insisted that Trump was of sound mind.

"President Trump was aware of who this individual was throughout this interview process, but this 'writer' is a nobody and insignificant so of course he never made an impression," Cheung stated.

Setoodeh also remarked on how Trump responded when the two discussed the potential existence of tapes in which Trump allegedly used a derogatory racial slur directed at Black people. He noted that Trump went into a "non sequitur" insisting that even if he were to use the word, it wouldn't have been while he was wearing a microphone.

Watch Setoodeh's interview with Collins below, or by clicking this link.

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