"Confabulation." It's a word you are going to be hearing a lot in the coming months.

President Trump has always been willing to mislead people when it was to his advantage. Even his supporters recognize this. Hence the famous admonition to "take Trump seriously, not literally."

But what Trump is doing now is something different. Confabulation is sometimes called "honest lying," because the person doing it genuinely believes what he's saying, even if it is obviously and patently false. A person confabulates when they are telling completely invented stories that don't provide them any particular tangible benefit. In other words, it's not like lying to try and get out of a speeding ticket.

Confabulation isn't misremembering a date or forgetting something. The mistakes of memory we are all subject to become confabulation when people remember false information in vivid detail — detail so vivid and complete that people who don't know otherwise often believe what they are hearing is true.

In older people, confabulation is one of the clearest early signs of dementia. The day you witness someone confabulate is often the day you are forced to admit to yourself that a beloved parent needs help, and that all the little slips and oddities you've been seeing can no longer be rationalized away.

For Trump, the day we could no longer pretend everything is fine came on July 15, when he told a lengthy story about his........

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