This mistake made everyone worry about Trump's cognitive decline

At this point in the campaign, everybody is pretty used to Donald Trump making big mistakes when he is speaking to the public. However, back in February, Trump made one of his worst mistakes: he forgot his wife's name!

It wasn't entirely clear from the videos of the incident whether or not the former president actually did forget his wife's name and confused her with one of his former staffers, but it was more than enough fuel to set social media a blaze with arguments that Trump was on the decline.

While speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 24th, the former president appeared to forget the name of his wife Melania while introducing her and then moments later called her Mercedes. 

"Well look, my wife, our great first lady, she was great... people love her," Trump told the crowd before later going on to say: "Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that's pretty good!" It was a gaffe that quickly went viral online. 

Newsweek noted that people clipped the speech and published a version of the gaffe on Twitter. Political analysts like Luke Beasley used Trump’s comment to accuse the former president of suffering from cognitive decline. 

“Donald Trump called his wife, Melania, 'Mercedes' in a speech and I haven't seen a word from the media,” Beasley explained before adding: "Donald Trump is in cognitive decline—why won't the media cover it?"

However, the situation may have been more complex than first appeared to some since Trump's allies argued he was actually referring to his former White House Director of Strategic Communications: Mercedes Schlapp. 

This was something Mercedes Schlapp pointed out herself on social media, publishing an image that showed a story by The Independent saying Trump confused his wife’s name and writing it was “fake news at its finest.”

Trump critic and conservative political consultant Rick Wilson commented on the former president’s gaffe and tried to tie it to the ongoing discussions over President Joe Biden’s age and how such a gaffe would reflect on him. 

"If Biden called Jill Biden 'Janice' we'd see 50 articles and sixteen NYT op-eds about his age,” Wilson explained, which triggered a harsh response from political commentator Keith Olbermann about the former president’s problems. 

“Trump spews out astonishing evidence of his dementia, brain trauma, and possible substance abuse on an hourly basis,” Olbermann wrote. “There is NO reason to add to this list easily disproven nonsense.”

“He did NOT call his wife 'Mercedes' at CPAC,” Olberman added. "He's unmistakably referring to Mercedes Schlapp.” It should be noted that Trump did later mention his former strategic communications director in his speech according to Newsweek. 

Forbes reported that this wasn’t the first time the former president has confused people's names in public and pointed to a deposition by Trump in his lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll accidentally identified Carroll as his ex-wife Marla Maples. 

Newsweek also noted that Trump has also confused former South Carolina Governor and GOP presidential nominee candidate Nikki Haley with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and has been caught slurring his words during speeches. 

Trump’s gaffe introducing Melania wasn’t the only big awkward moment of his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The former president also endorsed Biden for president in a weird comment about Vladimir Putin’s presidential preference. 

“He did announce the other day that he'd much rather see Biden as President. And I agree with him,” Trump said, referencing a comment Putin made about which possible candidate he preferred to see win the 2024 Election. 

The Trump campaign issued a statement to Forbes over his gaffes and explained that “the crazy leftists on X continue to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome and that's why they lie about everything.” However, the person Trump was referring to was not clarified.