I finally recognize why Donald Trump's speaking style seems familiar...

In My Humble Opinion
1

I taught primary grades in elementary school for many years and guided quite a few children through the writing process.

Here’s an excerpt from something Trump said yesterday in one of his speeches.
“Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right?
He was a bad guy. Really bad guy.
But you know what he did well?
He killed terrorists. He did that so good.
They didn’t read them the rights, they didn’t talk.
They were a terrorists - it was over.”
It’s a first grade story! Really short sentences! Really simple vocabulary! Somewhat ungrammatical!

For comparison sake:

Here’s a sample first draft from an actual first grader, written several years ago (spelling and punctuation cleaned up):

“I slept over my friend Gina’s house.
First we played. Then we watched TV.
We had meat loaf for dinner. It was good.
Do you know what we did then? We went to bed.
In the morning we watched TV. We played.
Then I went home. The End.”

And another:

“There was a dinosaur. It was a baby.
It was scared. It couldn’t find its mama.
It found a big dinosaur. Now it was really scared!
But the big dinosaur was nice.
It helped the baby find its mama.
They lived happily ever after.”

Subject matter aside (yeeks!), Donald’s “My Story About Saddam” would fit right in there.

2

“Then he got an idea, an awful idea; the Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea.”

:eek:

3

This isn’t a defense of his ideology, but his speaking style, despite it’s actual content, is well thought out and effective at communicating his point. There’s a really good video I saw a couple months back on youtube that articulated this better than I really can (look up nerdwriter and Trump, I’m at work, so I can’t link). The point is, he’s deliberately using short sentences and small words because it’s easier to understand. We sort of have this idea that long sentences and big words make people sound intelligent, and they do, but how effectively do they really communicate the points we’re trying to make?

I remember when I was in grad school and I was talking to my advisor about some of the research we were doing and how to write it. He went off on a bit of a tirade that’s really stuck with me, because there were papers that would take relatively simple ideas and it looked like they wrote it by taking a thesaurus and finding all the longest possible synonyms for every word they could. It would take multiple readings to actually get the point the write was getting at, and we went over examples of how it could have been rewritten to use simpler and shorter sentences and smaller words. I don’t know so much the state now, but he said that some of the journals we might be submitting publications to had started to reject sound papers because they were over complicating things.

So, yeah, it can make him sound stupid, but at the same time, no one is confused by what he’s saying, there’s no ambiguity, and he’s not even TRYING to win over the smart and well-informed people. They’re doing their own research and they’ll either vote for him or not based on that. Really, how many well-informed voters are actually going to be swayed between two candidates over a single speech? They’re probably listing issues like taxes, gun rights/control, foreign policy, immigration, and picking based on that. He’s after people that hear a simple message that they agree with expressing simple concepts like “bad guys” and or “good vs bad” that is ingrained in us as children, and it works.

If you hate him, fine, I definitely don’t agree with him on most issues, but don’t underestimate him, that’s the mistake the Republicans made, seeing talking at a fourth grade level as a weakness, over-simplifying complicated domestic and foreign issues and using social media and all of that sort of thing as juvenille, but it’s working.

4

Oh please!

The man can’t speak in complete sentences! And it’s entirely affected, so he can weasel away from whatever he almost very offensively just said! He’s always able to say, “That’s not what I meant!”, because he never completes a thought.

A skill he no doubt honed chasing deals at any cost, saying anything to make. Or better yet, ALMOST saying anything!

5

Here’s the video **Blaster Master **is talking about: How Donald Trump Answers A Question - YouTube

6

You can use simple language to explain difficult concepts, but that is not Trump’s goal.

He is targeting the great unwashed: those people who don’t read newspapers, don’t research items on their own, those who cannot believe that simple solutions cannot be effective, those who generally do not vote because they believe that all politicians are liars and crooks.

The U.S. political system is complicated, too complicated for many people to understand, and yet everyone over the age of 18 can vote.

It’s a system open to exploitation, and Trump is doing just that.

7

You’re agreeing with everyone. So why the “Oh please!”?

I have absolutely no doubt that when dealing with a savvy investor or some other businessperson in an office, Trump speaks completely differently. He alters his speaking pattern to suit his audience, because he isn’t an imbecile. When trying to speak to people who he is most likely to convince to vote for him, he speaks in very simple, rudimentary terms and uses images and concepts of fear and distress because that works to fire up frightened people with a simple view of politics.

8

Thank you, I appreciate it. I really think that will do a better job than I did since it actually breaks down something he said almost word by word.

My point is, I just think its dangerous to presume that he is unable or just too stupid to speak in complete sentences. As Mencken said: “No one in this world…has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” Yes, I absolutely agree that most often complex problems don’t have simple solutions, but he’s a salesman, and he knows that selling simple solutions is why people buy into diet/exercise fads, crappy infomercial products and all kinds of other ridiculous things. I think he’s just trying applying those marketing techniques to politics. Even if he loses, and most signs indicate he probably will, I still think he’s changed a lot about how future campaigns will be run.

9

What is revealing about his candidacy is not that narcissist/sociopaths/megalomaniacs exist in society – I think we all know they exist and can identify them with relative ease. What this actually reveals is that at least a full third (to something frighteningly close to half) of the population is so ill informed (poorly educated) that they are easy targets for the kind of message that Trump peddles and the manner in which he does so.

It turns out then, that the enemy is not the con-artist like Trump, but a large segment of the population that is either unable or unwilling to think critically. Which, I realize, sounds like an elitist thing to say. But is it? Have we arrived in a place and time where a well informed population is seen as being ‘elitist’ and not something everyone simply aspires to as a matter of principle and function of a better society?

10

In another video by Nerdwriter they point out that Trump is a salesman, a great salesman, and a great salesman can sell anything. I feel that is exactly what he is doing, and he is doing it very well. I don’t put that past him.

Every time something happens he just uses the strongest, but most basic language to loudly yell about and come up with soundbites on the topic. And there is no reasoning people out of it because what Trump says and the way he says it is much much better than any reasonable, intelligent person can put it. We’re not the salespeople, we’re the accountants.

This Clinton email “verdict” is driving me crazy. There are absolutely no facts being discussed just “CROOKED HILLARY IS CROOKED! IN FACT THE WHOLE FBI IS CROOKED!” It’s the exact same rhetoric as “VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM!” and “PLANNED PARENTHOOD IS SELLING BABY PARTS!” - which have been proven false but people continue to act upon these statements in ways that are really hurting real people, because the small, quiet, rational voices in their heads are drowned out by the VERY LOUD VOICES to the point where they are absolutely convinced that the louder voices must be true.

I’m preparing for a Trump presidency. America will have the leaders it deserves.

11

You are correct on all points. I don’t want the president we deserve, but that’s what we get no matter who we elect.

His use of speech reinforcement is a very basic and effective technique. The repetition directs the listeners mind to the talking points and cements them in just like learning a new password. This technique and timing are used by comedians and preachers to train their audiences.Watch Rod Man work the audience here, and his use of repetition in his routine.

12

That’s a style employed by many busy New Yorkers. It confers status in that environment: the person has too much on his mind to explain every point fully, so he seems important and effective.

13

I watched part of Trump’s speech in N.C. yesterday.

Part of it was an attack on President Obama, in which he criticized the president for flying on vacation in Hawaii to play “Lots and lots of golf”. “He chipped, he putted, he drove. He flew in that big 747. He flies everywhere in that 747, folks. He talks about saving the environment but flies in that big jet that vents all kinds of stuff into the air…”

Now you tell me… how does anybody with a pulse listen to that and not wonder… 'Mr. Trump, you play golf. You own golf courses. You fly everywhere in a big jet. You vent all kinds of things into the air."

How the FUCK do the people attending his rallies not ask those obvious questions, and many like it?

Just, HOW THE FUCK DOES HE GET AWAY WITH THIS BULLSHIT?

14

I don’t agree that he’s communicating all that well. Because he’s communicating a hell of a lot more than his intended message by not sounding like a normal person. Coming off as stupid has the side effect of coming off as wrong or easily disproven. The simplicity comes off as being unable to deal with complicated concepts.

The main thing he had going before was that he was saying things that people believed. So the simplicity didn’t matter if you think he’s right. But now that he’s communicating to people who disagree with him, I think it’s hurting him. His arguments against them seem stupid compared to what they are saying.

The one time I thought he did a good job was actually that tweet in response to Hilary’s “delete your account.” The argument was stupid, but at least it actually seemed like he put more thought into what he said than she did. It was the first “gotcha” I’d seen from him.

There is an optimal grade level, and perhaps some candidates have gone too high. But I don’t think going too low is the solution, either. Bumper sticker thoughts are useful, and have been used for a while. But there’s an assurance that there is more thought behind that slogan.

I think, by and large, people do care if their president actually seems stupid. Maybe his target audience didn’t, but his target audience was only enough to win the primaries.

15

Because his audience has already bought into the "our side=good, their side=bad’ fallacy and don’t bother thinking past that anymore.

16

You hear “He golfs! Just like I do! He’s harming the environment! Just like I do!”

His supporters hear that Obama is lazy, he’s on vacation instead of doing his job. He’s burning tax dollars frivolously just like those bums buying steak and lobster on food stamps. He is selling a climate change story which he obviously doesn’t believe. Trump can do whatever he wants because he’s rich and deserves it and they can all be rich, too, by electing him.

17

But they know damn well that every president flies on Air Force One. Do they expect the president to fly JetBlue in coach when going on vacation?

Surely not even the dimmest among Trump supporters is thinking Trump’s plane exhaust is made of angels’ breath.

How is he getting away with saying this absurd shit?.. And his supporters wonder why ‘elites’ look down on them with such utter contempt.

18

On The Daily Show last week, one Trump supporter mentioned how he talked at the third grade level. This was not view as all that horrible.

I’ve long held that one thing that helped Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were there accents. People associated those accents with dumbness and they liked that and voted for them. Once in office and these people found out they are actually smart, then things changed.

19

This is my own personal opinion. Please, no Trump supporters argue with what I say.

I have zero interest in Trump. I’m not interested in how he delivers his speeches or what he has to say. He is the worst candidate ever to run for ANY office. I have not listened to (nor read) a single word this person has said in his quest to become president. I just can’t stomach him. As a citizen of the USA, he has the right to pursue his dreams of being elected president. He is not someone I would ever cast my vote for. The fact that he is in this race seems like a big joke to me. His running for president actually causes me to feel embarrassed and humiliated. Other countries around the world must think our nation has sunk to new lows.

20

He slid down the chimney with kind of a bump.
But if Santa could do it then so could the Trump.*