Serious question here. Trump is known to spell words wrong…easy words. Like saying he wants to “heel” our country (instead of “heal.”)
Why don’t more politicians focus on this aspect when questioning his overall competency? This guy has access to Twitter, and can’t bother to spell check? It seems like a slam dunk. How can we trust this guy to lead the country when he can’t even spell a four letter word? Focusing on spelling seems like a low-risk, high-impact maneuver. Trump can’t really defend his lack of intelligence…pressed on this in a public forum, how can his ego strike back at his detractors? I don’t think he’s capable of admitting he can’t spell. He certainly won’t pull the “I don’t have to know how to spell to serve the country” card because it would seem like a cop-out, especially considering his seeming inability to admit his faults. His spelling mistakes are so egregious that they are indefensible and cast doubt on his coherence. His detractors will rightly point out that a rich guy with access to the best in educational opportunities can’t spell above a first grade level.
It seems like an easy way to force him to address his intelligence. I mean, GWB was widely viewed as somewhat not smart. Was he confronted in this way? How did he respond?
I would agree and say the two aren’t necessarily related in practical terms, but this is politics. Everything you do in the public arena affects people’s opinions of you. People expect their leaders to live up to certain standards. Whether this correlates with a general lack of intelligence is up to debate. But in the eyes of the country and the world, this can’t look good for Trump, and it seems like his critics could be jumping on it more.
Yeah crap I didn’t realize this was in the elections forum. I thought it was in general questions.
Of course spelling mistakes are going to be taken as a sign of intelligence. Anything you can disparage the other side over is fair game, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong, true or not.
Such is the state of politics. I’d argue it’s getting better than it was before, a hundred years ago, but something like spelling today, as a quick political shot, absolutely.
If you’re looking for material on the basis of which to question Trump’s intelligence, there’s an abundance of it. Pick on his spelling mistakes, and you just look like a nit-picking pedant. Plus, focus on his spelling and you are distracting from the substance of what he says, which is consistently monstrously stupid, and would still be even if correctly spelled.
Is it really low-risk? All it takes is one typo for it to blow up for whoever raises it. And I’m not sure it would even be high-impact in a good way.
Also, Trump isn’t (AFAIK) the only person with access to his Twitter account, and the more conciliatory tweets are often the ones that seem the least likely to be in his own voice, so the “heel” tweet might not even have been his.
No, it isn’t, especially with English, which has a fossilized orthography.
It’s one of many indicators of carelessness and a lack of professionalism throughout the administration, (because it isn’t only Trump who issues public statements with misspellings), but, as others have pointed out, it’s a distraction from more important issues to focus on misspellings.
People who care about such things will have already noticed. People who haven’t noticed probably aren’t going to be swayed much by having it pointed out to them.
There’s a risk that such a tactic could be counterproductive; a large part of Trump’s appeal to his base seems to be that he represents a change to the established elite. Picking on his spelling risks reinforcing the message that “them educated libruls are sitting in their ivory towers looking down on us normal folks.”
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Tony Schwartz, the guy who was the ghostwriter of ‘Art of the deal’, has said, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.”
I agree. The problem is that most people don’t read very much and / or are poor writers; mocking Trump for these things comes across as mocking them and automatically puts them on the defensive. It also reinforces the narrative that Trump is just a regular guy and a man of the people, never mind that he was born fabulously privileged and merely failed to take advantage of an excellent education.
Thanks for the responses. Thinking about ways Trump can be hurt politically, I guess my underlying question is why hasn’t there been a large-scale public showcase of his lies and falsehoods? I mean, he can twist his words a million ways, but there is plenty of video evidence that he is a liar and a "false prophet, and that things he said he would do he isn’t and things he said he wouldn’t do he is. It seems in my opinion that it shouldn’t be too much work to make a list of his most egregious actions, with video proof, and have some really higher-up like Biden or Kasich link to it. You know what I mean? I know there’s ample evidence of his incompetence and it seems like there aren’t enough sources to view the big picture. Someone needs to compile this information into a video or a list or something.
In my opinion, Slate does a good job of enumerating Trump’s many failures. They provide references and links to back up everything they say. If that was viewed by more people, they would see the emperor has no clothes. And, no, I don’t work for Slate. I just feel in general that there is so mich raw material to use to illustrate his incompetence and it’s not being spread to the people who need to hear it the most, in a manner they can understand and see the truth of.
False modesty aside, I’m regarded amongst my friends as somewhat of an intellect and I find myself making a lot of spelling errors. Three causes seem to predominate:
1.Fumble fingers. The keyboard is not the best instrument for communication sometimes.
Damn autocorrect.
3 Mental blocks. Fortunately, my vocabulary is sufficiently extensive that I’m generally able to employ a most suitable substitute when the spelling of a particular word has me flummoxed.
However, I’m not the freakin’ President of the United States. (More’s the pity, eh?) And while spelling errors do not imply stupidity, they do demonstrate a certain lack of professionalism. And people have a right to expect better from their President, even when said president is Donald trump.
Would they first claim the video evidence is fake or say “so what?” I think both responses are disturbing, but I would prefer them claim it is fake because at least then they are acknowledging that “real” video evidence still can sway them.
Perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to the issue because of an embarrassing typo in the title of a thread I started yesterday, but I think it’s a bit of a “he who is without spelling mistakes, cast the first stone” situation. Anyone who types out enough messages on a small phone keyboard is probably going to have some spelling errors, so most of the media will be ripe for cries of “hypocrisy!” if they try to point out Trump’s.
