Donald Trump’s way of speaking is hard to mistake for anyone else’s.
“I found a couple of patterns in the way that he organized his sentences to put certain words last, the way that he speaks at a very low reading level so that lots of people can understand,” says essayist Evan Puschak, owner of the YouTube channel Nerdwriter1 and author of Escape Into Meaning, who joins Molly Jong-Fast as a guest on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.
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Puschak, a former journalist whose channel has over 3 million subscribers, posts videos of himself reciting essays that unpack various topics, from public benches to politics. In one such political essay that now has over 10 million views, Puschak analyzes the way Trump talks.
“I was kind of just interested in why this guy was connecting with people. I saw this question that he answered on Jimmy Kimmel, which he didn’t really answer, you know, the way Trump speaks, [but] he gave this two-minute response, not quite an answer, and I just started looking at the language that he was using. I just looked at it and picked it apart piece by piece until I found some patterns and made the video about it,” says Puschak.
“Wait, so you think he’s not actually as stupid as he presents?” asks Molly.
“No, I think he is,” says Puschak. “I think if there’s one skill he has in communicating, it’s the ability to barrel forward with language and words without stuttering, something that I do all the time when I’m speaking extemporaneously, it gives an illusion of confidence. That doesn’t mean that he knows where he’s going, right?”
The two then dig more into how Trump likely developed this way of speaking, and how it helps him more than it hurts him. But is Trump speaking this way with the intention to manipulate? Puschak shares his verdict on that, too.
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