There’s nothing ‘possible’ about it unless you’re going to insist it fits a rigid standard for the specific term. The man does not read - he says so, his staff says so, people who have observed him say so. So whatever the cause, it’s a definite disability, the more so for someone in a job that requires processing prodigious amounts of complex information that can only be transmitted well via written sources.
And I think it’s probably at the root of nearly everything that concerns all of us. He’s willfully, deliberately, selectively ignorant, plans to remain that way, and seems to be proud of it. So his two hours of Fux News in the morning and the fawning of his staff is his input from the world on which he makes decisions.
I think it is probable that Trump has both some significant degree of dyslexia and ADD but to me someone who has functional illiteracy may be acting like they are choosing not but cannot and is different than someone who really does choose not to.
In any case I do not think the job requires processing prodigious amounts of complex information. It requires managing and appropriately delegating to a team of people who do such very well and being able to critically evaluate conflicting assessments from those people. It requires intelligence. It requires being able to articulate a positive vision of the future and the ability to inspire us. It requires believing in the core values of our country. It requires someone who actually cares what reality is.
A dyslexic who did and was those things would be a fine president. A dyslexic could do and be all those things. If Trump is dyslexic, and again I think he likely is to some degree, that is not his problem to me.
I’ve watched several of these videos about his (functional) illiteracy, and they’ve got nothing. And I don’t know why some people are looking so hard for this when trump’s done and said so many stupid things. Illiteracy wouldn’t make the top 10 list of reasons why he was a terrible pick for president.
BTW in preview this thread was titled for me “Seriously, is Trump a Fu…”
Yes, yes he is.
I have never read any kind of report or analysis or memoir or the like that concludes anything but that the President must - must, as a matter of course - absorb titanic amounts of complex information in order to understand… everything. World events, crises, other leaders, economics, and even what all his hand-picked advisors are telling him. Absolutely no amount of video presentation or oral briefing replaces reading (probably) a hundred thousand words a week of detailed information.
The burden and responsibility of the Oval Office don’t delegate. Some of the work can, but not the decision making, especially under crisis. No staff is large enough to replace the actual function of Chief Executive.
I stipulate that no one, not even an admired intellectual known for calm grasp of complex subjects, could be anything but a fair-weather President if he relied on one-page bullet-point memos and oral briefings.
And the weather report is anything but fair. All else aside, I wish we had a captain who knows in his bones what every rivet in his ship is doing and can do - not an Executive Master ensconced in his parlor and reading the occasional log entry.
I’ve ba-ack. Cooking with Gas mentioned that I never defined my terms for functionally illiterate. Very well.
In starting this thread, I didn’t mean, “Does Trump hate to read?” From what I’ve observed, I think he does.
The question I’m pondering is “Is Trump able to read at a level of proficiency we expect in a president?”. I’m guessing he can, but there’s a strong possibility that he cannot.
The ivy league thing doesn’t impress me. A determined illiterate with money and a lifetime of covering up his disability and a strong talent for bluffing could get through that adequately.
You know what bothered me from the clips? The lease reading. A true reader would’ve refused to read because he didn’t have his glasses, or read the lease laboriously. Someone who’s faking would do as Trump did, gaze and summarize. Bluff his way through.
He’s got yes men all around to read for him. He wants bullet points and maps and charts. It’s not impossible that Trump can’t read above a low scholastic level.
There have been plenty of presidents who were seen as not having a lot of smarts, Ford, Reagan, Bush II (Hmm, all Republicans), but never have any of their reading abilities been questioned.
It’s also not at all unlikely that he has below-average comprehension skills. He might read at an adult level, but project his own thoughts onto the text, disregarding what it actually says.
One clue could be to look at the tweets that have come from “his” phone … adults with unidentified significant reading disability usually are horrible spellers as adults and stick with only the most simple words. I know that “novel” spelling is common in tweets but a pattern of tweets from his phone that we are pretty sure he made (rather than the phone that someone else managed for him) use only the most simple words and commonly had many spelling errors, would be consistent with him having a reading disability. OTOH his using a typical vocabulary and making no more than a typical number of spelling errors would argue against it.
If he is severely dyslexic, if he had the misfortune to be taught to read by the look/say method, then he could conceivably have seen the name Seywan (a town in Pakistan where there was a terrorist attack two days ago and read it as Sweden. Whether this kind of error (if that explains his claim of a terrorist attack in Sweden) constitutes functional illiteracy or not is really a matter of definition. I think it does. Of course, we will never know if this is correct.
