Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/27/citizen-don.html
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Of course he didn’t grok the meaning of that movie, even back then when he may have had more of his so-called ‘wits’ about him.
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This is great, the obvious writes itself.
What I’m more surprised about is that he can discuss anything at all from the arts. Art for me is self enriching, but Trump appears more concerned about the external. He “appreciates” art only because he can own it and flaunt it. Does he really watch movies and look for meaningful insight?
Or is this just a practiced line? Probably something he picked off of someone else?
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I’ve been trying to figure out if Trump has undergone some mental decline, and having watched the whole clip… I’m still not sure.
I actually expected him to deliver something sounding interesting and insightful but the clip was honestly kinda boring. Trump didn’t offer any real insight, introspection, or even passion, he just stated some superficial observations.
You can’t draw much from a 4 minute clip, but while Trump seems to have gotten less stable I don’t think his wits have gotten any duller.
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One of the things that strikes me is that Trump’s ideas are banal, of course, but his language is clear. He speaks in more or less real sentences, and while they’re not insightful, they’re coherent. And then you see what he does now, and it’s pretty clear that he’s losing his mind. His speech has descended to word salad. Why is that not obvious to people?
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‘Citizen Krook’ reviews ‘Citizen Kane’.
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That was exactly what Kane did, and it was the decision that destroyed Kane’s political career. Did Trump even watch past the second act?
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I’m not sure this clip is a useful comparison since he’s answering specific questions (and has no need to dodge admissions of criminal acts). One reason his speeches are so random is because he’s essentially doing a steam of consciousness improv.
One of my “models” for explaining Trump is that he is actually fairly quick witted, but he’s extremely lazy and has no focus. So he has decent one-liners and can work a crowd, but he can’t actually put in the work to learn the facts or focus to build an argument.
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I’ve seen him answer questions and speak more or less gibberish, but your point that he may be trying to multitask and avoid saying something incriminating is an interesting one I hadn’t considered. That’ll have a tendency to make someone speak incoherently, I imagine.
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Maybe he meant “swap the second with a third”?
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I honestly can’t see what others are seeing in this interview. True, Trump doesn’t sound semi-delirious like he does today. But he still strings random words together, giving the vague impression that he’s saying something without ever actually doing so. His thinking is what a friend of mine once described as “deeply, deeply, deeply…shallow.”
It’s been years since I watched this. Nice way to drag me back Xeni.
Wow, he’s actually coherent.
I’m not convinced the word salad thing is due to a decline.
It is an effective technique to not really say a whole lot and have many many people project their own ideas onto what he says.
He may have come across it accidentally. It is also consistent with mental decline, so he may well be suffering from that (or rather we are suffering from his mental decline). I just won’t assume the only reasonable explanation for word salad form him is oncoming mental collapse.
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I think you are correct. “Should be almost illegal”; “We’ll see what happens”; “I may have to take over the investigation”; “Many people say…”; These are all ways of saying something while still leaving himself a technical out. And his supporters certainly read into what he says.
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