Member-only story
(Not) Learning from Mistakes
President Trump, and others with ADHD, have trouble learning from their mistakes.
This week, when US coronavirus deaths were cresting towards six figures, and infected individuals exceeded one and a half million, reporters asked Mr. Trump what he might have done differently. “Nothing” was his response. Despite demonstrating remarkable proficiency in making mistakes, he doesn’t seem to learn from them.
In the same week, the president repeated several errors that others had publicly corrected him on. He touted the benefits of hyroxychloroquine for treating and preventing coronavirus, despite studies failing to show a benefit and demonstrating clear health risks. He made claims that voting by mail, a practice he indulges in, is ridden with fraud, although research has failed to verify this. He boasted of his ability to override the decisions of governors regarding opening up churches for worship, even though he had been corrected when he made similar false claims recently, forcing him to retreated from his announcement that he had “authority” over everyone and concede the next day that “all responsibility” for re-opening states lay with the governors. He persists in making errors that have been pointed out to him.
Mr. Trump’s difficulty in learning from his mistakes predates the coronavirus…
