I wouldn’t either. He seems really unsophisticated to me. Even after all that stuff I said about speaking to accomplish ends vs. speaking to convey meaning, you can do the former and still speak very well or very poorly. I read what he actually said as an attempt to get people to think he is smart and well-read, but to well-read people it very plainly says he doesn’t read. Trump not only hasn’t had to communicate ideas in his life to get through advanced education, but he also hasn’t had to be very good at actually getting people to react how he wants them to react. That’s what happens when you are born rich in a nation that heavily rewards the mere fact of being rich - you never have to develop any competencies.
That being said, this doesn’t exclude the possibility that he does read a bunch of stuff (maybe stuff he doesn’t think would make him sound smart, he might be devouring spy books or westerns every night, for example). The content of his message is only a clue as to how he wants you to feel when you hear it, the meaning of the words doesn’t bear any relationship to the truth at all.
