Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/03/16/trump-i-love-to-read.html
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Well, you know, I love to read. Actually, I’m looking at a book, I’m reading a book, I’m trying to get started.
Yep, that sure is how people who like to read books talk about books. I’m convinced.
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The important question is “What’s he reading?” Got to be something that suits his ability and interests…
To be fair, this is part of the “Who Cares About” series and just has a very poor choice of title.
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Well, you know, I love art. Actually, I’m looking at an art, I’m doing some art, I’m trying to get started.
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Well, you know, I love French cooking. Actually, I’m looking at a “crape,” I’m tasting a flavor, I’m trying to get started.
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Well, you know, I love hiking. Actually, I’m looking at a hike, I’m going to do the hikes, I’m trying to get started.
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Look, look, See see. See Donald read. See Donald read a book. The book has 4 pages.
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It’s not that he lacks character, it’s that he has 140 of them.
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I never knew they did a board-book version of those.
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Sigh. 
I miss the days when we had a true bibliophile in the White House.
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That man is a national treasure.
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Wow, I’m actually in a position to advise the great tRump!
I get the not having a lot of time to yourself thing. I’ve got a six year old, and you can almost never get a moment to yourself. But… Everyone has to take a dump sometime! Leave a book on the tank of le toilette, and you can get a chapter in here and there. Depending on your diet, you can be pretty much assured of a few minutes of quiet and solitude even if you only say that you’re dropping the kids off at the pool.
So wise! Maybe I can have a lucrative cabinet position as well. Well… I’m actually not very good at sucking up… and I don’t have any Russian connections… and I’m not a millionaire… So, I guess no position for me in the new Reich.
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During the campaign it was striking that all of Trump’s references to books fell into a few categories:
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The Bible, which he claimed to read, well, religiously. This was obviously extremely implausible; leaving aside any ideas about what reading the Bible would do for one’s moral character, his use of language is for an American politician (or any American of his generation) very unusually not influenced by the language of the King James Bible, nor does he make references to popular biblical allegories or stories, even in speeches others have written.
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His own books that he had ghostwritten for him, obviously. He thinks they’re great. He also seems to think he wrote them.
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The book of the influential person he was talking to at the moment, whose support he wanted. Needless to say, he showed no particular familiarity with their book.
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Books he almost certainly hadn’t read since leaving school - All Quiet On The Western Front, for example.
On this basis, I came to the (not at all original) conclusion that Donald Trump probably hadn’t read a book in fifty years, not even those that bore his name. And here he is, in quite a departure from his previous behavior, claiming to have read Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad - a harrowing series of allegories about slavery, race, and injustice. Needless to say, I assume he’s lying (I assume he didn’t even listen to the ~2 hour BBC Radio abridgment, which I’ll readily concede is my sole source of information about the book). It would be delightful if Mr. Whitehead were able to quiz him a bit about what he remembers from the book, and what he took from it. From what he told Tucker Carlson I’d guess Trump hasn’t even read a review of the book.
Edited: when I commented earlier, I didn’t understand that one of the quotes was from an interview with Obama, which was cleared up in a reply to my comment by L_Mariachi, quoted below. Sorry about that confusion, and I’ve edited with a strikethrough appropriately.[quote=“L_Mariachi, post:32, topic:97216”]
The left image in that tweet was from an interview with Obama, to contrast how he talks about literature with how Trump does in the right image.
[/quote]
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And then there’s this:
I paid … a lower percentage than somebody that’s working in a factory someplace. And that should not beThe only reason he paid a non-neglible amount of tax in 2005 is the Alternative Minimum Tax - basically a mechanism that looks at large reported gross incomes that are modified by losses and deductions to near-zero taxable income, and demands the filer pay a significant amount on the gross income. Trump has campaigned consistently on eliminating the AMT.
A competent interviewer with a soul would have known that, and skewered him on it. So I guess Tucker Carlson was never going to.
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What are you talking about?! You’re unqualified. That means you’re perfect for the job in tRump’s whitehouse.
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