Donald Trump has long been criticized for being consistently incapable of speaking in a single coherent English sentence. One expert said this is because Trump can’t use language to communicate complex ideas. So, he lies, babbles, rambles and brags, instead.
Another of these experts, Geoffrey Pullum, a linguist at the University of Edinburgh, said Trump’s speech reveals a man with scattered thoughts, a short attention span and a lack of intellectual discipline and analytical skills. He also said Trump’s way of talking reveals an undisciplined narcissist. Trump craves power but doesn’t have the intelligence to wield it wisely.
Trump confirmed these intellectual incapacities during a recent interview at Trump-friendly Fox News. Harris Faulkner, the African-American female host and newscaster, asked Trump what he thinks protesters are demonstrating against after the murder of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer on May 25.
Floyd’s gruesome death — the man was choked to death by the white cop that knelt on his throat for about nine minutes — has sparked mostly peaceful protests against police brutality and racism in the U.S. and worldwide. The protests in the U.S. began May 26.
Faulkner told Trump she’s curious as to what he thinks of the protesters. She clarified she isn’t talking about the rioters and the looters because “we’re intelligent enough to know the difference in our culture, right? … What do you think they need, right now, from you?”
Here is Trump’s verbatim reply:
“Protesters for different reasons. You’re protesting also because, you know, they just didn’t know. I’ve watch — I watched very closely. Why are you here? They really weren’t able to say, but they were there for a reason, perhaps,” falsely suggesting he’d personally talked with protestors.
Trump went on to say “a lot of them really were there because they’re following the crowd. A lot of them were there because what we witnessed was a terrible thing. What we saw was a terrible thing.
“And we’ve seen it over the years. We haven’t, you know, this was one horrible example. But you’ve seen other terrible examples. You know that better than anybody who would know it. And I know it. I’ve seen it, too. I’ve seen it before I was president. I’ve seen it. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s a disgrace. And it’s got to stop.
“At the same time, you also know that we have incredible people in law enforcement that we have to cherish them and take care of them. And we can’t let something like this, we have a bad apple go out and, you know, destroy the image of a whole of millions of people that take really good care of us. And then you have a movement where they say, let’s not have a police department. And you say, where are these people coming from?”