Is it possible that Trump can't read, or reads at a very low reading level?
This video
It certainly would explain other things. The immature language he uses like “bigly.” The stumbling over words that are more than a syllable long when he Tweets.
They have a clip in there from SNL producers discussing how hard it was for trump to read his line when he hosted the show, and couldn’t seem to read it in context. “You ready to go, turkey legs?”
He watches TV host shows to get his information.
The clip is 11 minutes. I hate videos, actually (I’d rather read) but I watched the whole thing. It has a clip of Trump struggling to read a lease during a deposition. He admits there that he doesn’t even read his own leases, or does so very rarely. He doesn’t seem to understand what is in the lease he is pretending to read.
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Anything is possible but this is highly improbable.
Why would it be improbably, @Hypocrisy_Central? He refuses to read his briefings. He has his daughter and son in law as top advisors and they know if he has a issue and can find away to keep it their secret. He’s had people around him all his life to cover for him. His vocabulary is pretty much limited to playground insults.
Why would you think it improbable?
The possibility of a learning disability being at the base of the Trump disorder should surprise no one. The interesting thing in this is that there is no visible evidence of an ability to read from the man. The skill is simply one we all assume necessary for a man of his “achievement”, though I could not attest to any indication that he can read so much as a “stop” sign.
@Hypocrisy Central come to think of it, the fact that he tweets does suggest rudimentary reading skills. Doesn’t it?
Does anyone know if he has a high school diploma? He could be asked to provide proof.
Yes. But in the video he said he hollers to an aid in the next room to write his tweets. But they’re his own words.
Yeah, it never even remotely occurred to me that maybe he can’t read. It would explain a lot of things, like a lack of philosophy, a lack of deeper thinking.
Yes he has a HS diploma. I think his Dad had to pull strings to keep him from getting kicked out of school because he was such a rotten human being. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, but with no distinction.
Well, considering that the writing in his tweets is on the same level as that of a child in primary school, quite possibly.
I’ve heard multiple pundits opine that he talks at a 8th grade level.
I heard that it is difficult for translators to relay his words because of his heavy use of sarcasm as well…
God. We went from two ivy league graduates with law degrees to a fool who can barely manage 8th grade.
^In his previous profession he didn’t have to be very smart,or well educated…
I think he is the product of a military school for his secondary education. And as for college, we have only to cite W’s matriculation as evidence of another application of the maxim “too big to fail”.
Yeah @Dutchess_III . His lawyers provided almost all of his documents (normal. )
Again. He was never involved in government, and would have had little reason to speak with intelligence. His business dealings were pretty one sided. Ultimatums, and bullying were his main verbal tools.
Okay, let’s consider the possibility that all the blustering and over the top defensiveness is but a coping tactic shielding the Donald from what would surely be a debilitating psychological load. Could he actually keep such a condition a secret? Could he possibly pull it off for any length of time as President. There is no question that Reagan was actually President for a considerable period while displaying less than subtle symptoms of full blown dementia. Might Trump have people about him skillful enough to shield him from discovery? Or will his own inability to shut up wind up “snatching the covers off him”?
Could he have a mild form of Asperger’s?
He can’t read.
He tweets via voice text. That is why he doesn’t catch typos.
He did a deposition on a law suit where he claimed he had not read a critical document, just signed it, and refused to read a portion for the record.
He has many of the behaviors that people use to hide reading problems.
I think that deposition is in the video I posted. He said he couldn’t read it because he didn’t have his glasses with him. Has anyone ever seen Trump wear glasses? They offered to make a copy with larger print. he declined.
Where did you hear that he tweets via voice text, @zenvelo?
Trump, by his own admission, does not read so his vocabulary is a product of his dependence on television for his education. Thus his unpresidented faux pas.
@stanleybmanly Steve Bannon is pulling the strings. He writes the speeches, puts out the texts and tweets, provides the statistics and performs the tasks normally done by the Prez. Trump is just his hand puppet.
I agree, and as with Reagan and Bush II the scheme might almost work were it not for the fact that THIS one can’t shut up. This is the dummy beyond the control of even the most adroit of ventriliquists. Every show is a guaranteed embarrassment regardless of how skillfully the strings are manipulated. And of course compensating eloquence is irrelevant when your dummy can’t read let alone stick to a script. Nope. This particular windbag is beyond management and the wind emitted renders manipulation impossible. Even those of sinister motives must conclude that this is a wind destined to “blow nobody good”.
I still think Alzheimer. Probably why he has Bannon so close. Bannon, Tiller and Putin all probably know and know that revealing it may get Trump impeached. That’s why he doesn’t dare step out of line with them.
Whether Trump is capable of reading or not is a moot point. The fact is he doesn’t. When Megyn Kelly asked Trump to name the last book he read he replied “I read passages, I read areas, chapters, I don’t have the time.”
I recently replied to a tweet of his calling him illiterate.
I then realised that I wasted my time, since he wouldn’t be able to read it anyway.
He’s a narcissist who surrounds himself with sycophants. I expect he has only the most flattering tweets read out to him.
I’m on the fence about this. There seems to be some evidence to support it, but not enough to say for sure and it’s quite a claim. I would require a bit more to say that I think it’s true. I do think it’s possible, but I’m not convinced. I agree wholly with @flutherother in that it doesn’t matter so much if he can’t, but that he doesn’t. It’s not even that he doesn’t read books, he doesn’t appear to read much of anything at all. Ignorance is irresponsible and in the hands of power, it’s dangerous.
Maybe he forgot how to read….
I know I forgot how to do long division, and algebra. I just don’t use it. When I worked in a medical setting, I always had a calculator.
I’m nowhere close to Trump’s age. If he never reads,and tweets by voice ,or has someone type for him, I think it’s plausible he may have forgotten. Or is embarrassingly bad at it now.
Jesus. It never occurred to me before now that any president, before running for nomination, should be required to take a basic aptitude test.
Hey, at the very least Drumpf is a perfect representation of the general colonial population.
It would be interesting to go back to those teleprompted speeches he has done and see if, when he went off track from what was written for him, it perhaps occurred at a particularly difficult, post- eighth grade word.
They need to channel Seuss for his speeches.
I’ve actually been rolling this question over since Dutchess III left it here, and she’s right. It’s more than peculiar that a man with Trump’s advantages would arrive at this station in life replete with so many crudities regarded as scandalous by inhabitants of the rarified circle he inhabits. He does have the behavior and mannerisms of a 6th grade bully.
Well, his father had the money to surround him with a clock of well educated people whose sole purpose was to disguise his immaturity. In return, they got rich too.
And accusations were silenced.
Any lawsuits were answered with death threats.
It went on so long that he actually came to believe he could handle any thing when he has never handled anything by himself in his life.
Well ya know, I’m not so sure being able to read is all that great sometimes. After all we have to read about our president that can’t read, and all the shitty shit he is doing.
Quite frankly, being illiterate might not be such a bad thing, under these circumstances.
Just think how much better we’d all be feeling these last few weeks if we couldn’t read. lol
Well, from where he sits he can blame all the mistakes on others around him because he didn’t know what what was going on. Not his fault.
In fact, he’s done just that regarding the disastrous outcome of his first EO regarding the Muslim travel ban.
You know when I first saw this question I kind of wrote it off as silly and disingenuous. I know that the president is not erudite or intellectually curious, and I know his vocabulary reflects an eighth grade reading level; I’m even quite sure that he does not read books and maybe doesn’t even read newspapers. But of course he can read! What kind of person makes it to the age of nearly 70 without learning how to read? Not someone who owns as many businesses as Trump does.
But after watching that video and reading some of the comments here I’m beginning to think it is an entirely valid question, and that the answer to it is almost certainly, “yes, it is possible he can’t read.”
This is a man who has never had to decipher complicated, detailed documents without a trusted legal minion or four in his ear.
Now that he has the responsibility to do this for a whole nation, he uses not longtime government experts on US foreign and domestic policy, but a rabid political jack-a-nape without protfolio—Brietbart’s Steve Bannon—as his main advisor to do his deciphering for him.
It’s not that he can’t read. It’s that he is lazy—spent his life dependent on loyal servants and yesmen and therefore inexperienced and possibly the most unwise, unrestrained, emotionally impulsive person ever to sit in the Oval Office.
This is an extremely long but gripping psychological analysis of Donald Trump by Dan McAdams, a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. It is quite well-informed, well researched, and I found it highly explanatory of his strange behaviours. And it is prescient.
The Mind of Donald Trump, Atlantic Monthly, June 2016
@Espiritus_Corvus I read that article not long ago. yes, astoundingly good!
I love how George Simon says that Trump is a dream come true for showcasing pathological narcissism, that otherwise, he would have had to hire actors and write vignettes for his workshops but instead he can use Trump clips. haha
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