Via Richardson, I give you an unedited transcript of Trump off script, talking about his potentially disastrous decision to release water from California reservoirs for no discernible reason, except perhaps to demonstrate that his stupid, wrong headed idea was in fact awesome. Just read this:
"I broke into Los Angeles, can you believe it, I had to break in,” he said. “I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water, and the water is now flowing down. They have so much water they don't know what to do. They were sending it out to the Pacific for environmental reasons. Ok, can you believe it? And in the meantime they lost 25,000 houses. They lost, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it. But, uh, we have the water—uh, love to show you a picture, you’ve seen the picture—the water’s flowing through the half-pipes, you know, we have the big half-pipes that go down. Used to, twenty-five years ago they used to have plenty of water but they turned it off for, again, for environmental reasons. Well, I turned it on for environmental reasons and also fire reasons but, ah, and I’ve been asking them to do that during my first term, I said do it, I didn’t think anything like could happen like this, but they didn’t have enough water. Now the farmers are going to have water for their land and the water’s in there, but I actually had to break in. We broke in to do it because, ah, we had people who were afraid to give water. In particular they were trying to protect a certain little fish. And I said, how do you protect a fish if you don’t have water? They didn’t have any water so they’re protecting a fish. And that didn’t work out too well by the way….”
If there is a host of culprits for why we have to endure four years of this deeply evil moron polluting our national politics and degrading our national reputation, the complicity of the press has to be up there. James Fallows has noted that Trump's verbal dexterity has declined noticeably from his first term. He is 78 years old, three years younger than Biden was when we all determined he was too old to be president.
Trump's blathering nonsense makes sense, if you consider that he is a man who was never really smart and suffering from cognitive decline. Trump was shipped off to the New York Military Academy in the early '60s. Reasons for sending the child of a wealthy NY developer off to boarding school can vary, but at the time, there was no understanding of learning disabilities, and kids who might be struggle in school could be sent away to a place like NYMA for "discipline" and to avoid everyone seeing that Donald isn't that "smart."
People with learning disabilities can be quite intelligent. Woodrow Wilson and John Irving were both incredibly dyslexic, yet both became quite talented writers. Some forms of ADHD can really nurture creativity. However, learning differences require different educational strategies and disciplines. Typical schooling won't work.
Trump - and other like him - was able to use a different work around: money. Money meant he never had to grind his way through the reading. My dad was dyslexic, and as a lawyer, he had to read a LOT. As a result, he often came home late at night and worked late at home. He had to put additional hours in because that was what his ADHD/dyslexia required.
Trump just doesn't read. Like, he famously doesn't read. I'm not saying he CAN'T read, but he's not the guy to expose himself to ridicule for being "stupid" because he struggles to read quickly.
Reading is a critical practice to hold off cognitive decline.
Trump is not a bright man. He is not a kind man. Some respond to setbacks or disabilities with increased empathy. FDR and polio for instance. Trump was never that guy. Shielded from adversity by his wealth, he never stretched his smooth brain beyond the NY real estate world; a world of corruption, bullying and shady dealings. That, in the end, is all he knows. Incurious about the world, he takes his own priors as the gospel. Think of all the times he's said something like "Nobody knew that Greenland existed before me," which is his way of confessing he just learned about Greenland.
Cognitive decline is not reversible. It will be interesting to see if our media continues to sanewash his demented utterings, and hasten the decline of America.
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