Experts sound alarm: Trump's new actions fit pattern doctors link to memory loss

While discussing the status of the war during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Donald Trump gave a confusing answer to a question about the Strait of Hormuz, appearing to either confuse Iran with the nearby Gulf state of Oman, or threaten to attack the latter, which is a key US ally.

"Oman will behave just like everyone else,” said the Commander in Chief, “or we'll have to blow them up.”

Economist Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom was quick to share his thoughts on the slip, posting, “We are so far into ‘mad king’ territory that the White House may not even bother to clarify whether Trump just confused Oman with Iran or is indeed threatening to bomb Oman.”

The State Department went on to tweet Trump’s quote. Whether that verifies that he indeed meant Oman or is an attempt to pass off a gaffe as intentional is up for debate, and either is just as likely based on prior behavior. Whatever the case, it has experts worried.

“What needs to be understood about this comment is that it does not come from the mind of Donald Trump alone. It comes from the minds of his closest advisors and inner circle that led us to this disaster,” said noted security expert Brett Erickson of the incident. “The same ‘advisors’ that pushed for [war with Iran] have been whispering in the ear of Trump that Qatar is the enemy. Oman is the enemy. NATO is the enemy. Everyone is the enemy if they do not blindly support the zealots and cult leaders within this administration… Bombing Oman? That’s exactly what we need. ANOTHER war from the ‘no new wars’ President.”

If it were the case that Trump confused Oman with Iran, it would represent yet another gaffe that is sure to contribute to speculations about his mental fitness. Some have suggested that the president’s frequent tendency to swap words — like Oman and Iran — could be a sign of early dementia. Verbal problems such as this and other issues prompted a body of 36 leading medical experts to send a letter to Congress in April, in which they argued that Trump may be mentally unfit to serve.

One of the signatories, Dr. Henry David Abraham, professor of psychiatry emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, noted an example similar to Trump’s Oman/Iran moment: when he repeatedly confused Greenland and Iceland during a speech earlier this year.

“Not only did he have these kinds of linguistic failings,” said Dr. Abraham, “but he began to exhibit more and more signs of rage and poor impulse control.”

And according to Harry Segal, senior lecturer in the Psychology Department at Cornell University and in the Psychiatry Department at Weill Cornell Medicine, “Recently, several clinicians have noted the ways he has begun to mistake words, lose his train of thought, confuse Biden with Obama, particularly during long rallies held in the evening. There are examples of phonemic paraphasia — swapping parts of words for others that sound similar; these are signs of early dementia.”