What accounts for Trump’s low vocabulary and word salad?
Politico: Trump talks like 3rd grader
Trump talks like child under 11 years
Through 2016, however, Trump simple, blocky sentences worked well for him, playground taunts and all, and even words that seemed confused on paper seemed understandable to his audiences. Even his most outrageous unfiltered statements, against McCain, or the Gold Star family seemed not to hurt at all. So like all successful politicians, his “tactics” were inferred to be the product of a special genius — he was crazy like a fox.
Recent events make that interpretation less plausible.
First, Trump’s recent unscripted statements whether in interviews or blurted comments are difficult to fit with a rational strategy. Second, comparison of interviews now and his past show less coherence.
Reviewing opinions of qualified psychologists, one cannot say definitively that Trump suffers from early stage dementia. He could be suffering from dementia, he could be suffering from a loss of capacity within normal bounds with aging; he could be finding the Presidency too stressful and tiring for a person of his age and health (“low energy”); or it could be that a previously successful gut strategy to publicity has blown up in dealing with real world events. What seems clear to me is that if Trump were your father, you would want him evaluated to see if he was still up to handling his affairs.
An excellent review of the signs of concern with respect to Trump is found at
Trump wasn’t always so linguistically challenged. What could explain the change?
We’ve all seen both the nonsensical and the self-destructive in recent Trumpian interviews. The one where he lectures The Economist on econ 101 as his invention:
But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”?
Yes.
We have to prime the pump.
It’s very Keynesian.
We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?
Priming the pump?
Yeah, have you heard it?
Yes.
Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.
It’s…
Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out.
Or blurting out at the end of a photo shoot with no question in front of him: "Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name Israel," convicting himself as he tries to clear his name. Or the Lester Holt interview, after having his spokesmen, including Pence, say he was just following Rosenstein’s recommendation, out pops:
HOLT: Monday you met with the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
TRUMP: Right.
HOLT: Did you ask for a recommendation?
TRUMP: What I did is I was going to fire Comey. My decision. It was not...
HOLT: You had made the decision before they came into your office (ph).
TRUMP: I -- I was going to fire Comey. I -- there's no good time to do it, by the way.
They...
HOLT: Because in your letter, you said...
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: They -- they were...
HOLT: ...I -- I accepted -- accepted their recommendations.
TRUMP: Yeah, well, they also...
HOLT: So, you had already made the decision.
TRUMP: Oh, I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.
HOLT: So, there was...
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: They -- he made a recommendation. He's highly respected. Very good guy, very smart guy.
And the Democrats like him. The Republicans like him.
He had made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it
And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself -- I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won.
And the reason they should've won it is the electoral college is almost impossible for a Republican to win. It's very hard because you start off at such a disadvantage. So, everybody was thinking they should've won the election. This was an excuse for having lost an election.
This is the talk of a man who has lost his filter. As shown in the analysis and clips of the article above, Trump didn’t use to speak like this. He used to speak in well-thought out paragraphs, which is not so easy to do:
Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.”
Now, Trump’s vocabulary is simpler. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month:
“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”
For decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease.. . .
The reason linguistic and cognitive decline often go hand in hand, studies show, is that fluency reflects the performance of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher-order cognitive functions such as working memory, judgment, understanding, and planning, as well as the temporal lobe, which searches for and retrieves the right words from memory. Neurologists therefore use tests of verbal fluency, and especially how it has changed over time, to assess cognitive status… .
No one observing Trump from afar, though, can tell whether that’s “an indication of dementia, of normal cognitive decline that many people experience as they age, or whether it’s due to other factors” such as stress and emotional upheaval,. . .His language difficulties could be due to the immense pressure he’s under, or to annoyance that things aren’t going right and that there are all these scandals,” he said. “It could also be due to a neurodegenerative disease or the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging.” Trump will be 71 next month.
What could explain the change? The article is well worth reading and the comparative video clips are worth a view.
Meanwhile, Americans aren’t just concerned with Trumpcare, and many are not concerned with Russia, but they do worry about Trump losing touch with reality:
Americans Worry About Their President:
56% of Americans (including 1 in 4 Republicans) say Mr. Trump sometimes loses touch with reality, a plurality, 33%, describe Mr. Trump's mental health as poor.
