He has to keep his words, sentences simple. He has to repeat them a lot. It's the only way he can stay on message. Disturbingly, the words he DOES manage to get out of his head reveal somebody who can't even communicate at a junior high school level.

Oh wow. He really said that.

He is smarter than he appears. It would be a mistake to categorize Trump as an idiot. That was Bush. As much as we might want to sling mud in the general vicinity of Trump and jump on every little thing he says--imo, it's better to seek the meaning beneath.

He's a psychopath. A narcissistic manipulator. It's how he won the election. Speaking visually programs peoples' brains into, well, visualizing: which Trump did a lot. It seems *tangible*, then. "We're going to build a wall. A big wall. A massive wall. A wall so big, yada yada yada" When he talked about ISIS, he said stuff like "They're putting people in cages and chopping off peoples' heads." "Look at the crowds. Look at all the people that support me." Along with the repetition and over-confidence, it makes it seem like he knows what he's talking about. It makes it seem like he can create progress and solve problems--and that people support him.

He fostered a culture of threats and fear, because that's what naturally makes people desire strong leadership. This is known in psychology as "cultural tightness"--the desire for strong rules and punishment of deviance, which increases when groups feel they are under threat. Then, he made people think that he was the only one--the only one out of 350 million people--who could possibly save them from those threats.

He rejected the establishment, something that the voting populace wanted. This is the primary thing that the DNC completely fucked up on--like, to a mentally retarded level: not knowing what it is your constituents actually want.

With the level of confidence and charisma he exuded (traits that humans are naturally weak against--we are emotional creatures first, rational creatures second: and we are notoriously weak against charisma and confidence) and all of these other little psychological tricks and pressure points, he took the gold.

What Trump did was harvest the sheep. He just went right into their brain and put what he wanted to put there.

But. Don't be deceived. He's not Bush. He's much more insidious. He plays the brain. He's not being an idiot. He's being a puppet master.

People said he wasn't a politician, so that was a good thing. Except he's even worse than a politician. He's a businessman.

This is just an extended version of the kind of inarticulate nonsense we heard from him throughout the campaign, yet the Hillary-hate was so strong that he still managed to get elected. I’m tempted to say that those who supported this profoundly ignorant man will deserve the awful stuff I fear is going to happen after he takes office, except the rest of us will also be affected and we won’t deserve it. I honestly do hope we’ve got it wrong about him and he will turn out to be a good president, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m afraid I don’t see any reason for optimism.

"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is"

-Dan Quayle, atttempting to say "a mind is a terrible thing to waste". Still more coherent and less garbled than everything that comes out of Trump's mouth.

Of course it does. I feel like we just elected our first special needs president. He's what we get now. Now we just have to wade through it all and hope one of those smart people he referenced is smart enough to deal with him in a manner that makes sense to him and for the rest of us.

It's going to be a long 4 years. If he lasts that long

@RootinTootin
Of course, Rootin, as a person who values intelligence and articulate argument, Trump's incoherence is troubling.........however, this is not really the point is it?

If there's anything we can learn from this election is that Americans are not looking at cogent arguments and consistent and reasonable grasp of issues. The voters were not concerned about the flood of Trump lies....and the cheap and banal character he represents...they loved that he was something different from the status quo represented by Hillary Clinton.

Trump is a lesson in the use of hyperbole and iconic ideas, no matter their invalidity, no matter that they are lies easily debunked......what these ideas represent is a grasp of the emotion of a people willing to tolerate the most fatuous nonsense for a message that resonates with their basic needs and their discontents.

😞

Trump is also functionally illiterate. He can not be educated fast enough to make informed decisions. That's terrifying.

[c=#7700B2]Thank Goddess he is not [b]my [/b]president-elect, but the world is going to have to live with this. But I honestly don't know if he is really a bumbling idiot, or cleverly pretends to be one in order to unnerve and disconcert the public, as a kind of Machiavellian negotiating tactic.[/c]

Remember when George W Bush was the dumb one?

We are in trouble with this POS

Extremely. But too late to do anything about that now. We'll just have to wait and see how long it takes before Pence is running everything, as he's already preparing to do. I don't think it will be long--and then the people who voted for Trump will get to see how badly they were played.

He's such a fuckwit , it's barely conceivable. And it's also little wonder that he's declined to give a press conference yet. That's actually something I'm looking forward to...... when the world gets to see that you have elected a semi-literate shit for brains. He makes Dubya look almost refined.

I feel like it shouldn't require quite this much effort to decipher what the leader of a country is saying when they're speaking a language you understand and they are (apparently) fluent in.

None a dose people make sense anywho

You cant stump the Trump

lol yes

Yes