Our current president stands out in many respects: he’s the first to lack any prior government or public service experience, the first to casually label his golf resort as the Winter White House, and the first to benefit financially from a global business empire while serving in office. Now, we can add another unique distinction: he’s the first president whose speech is so disjointed that accurately capturing his words is nearly impossible.
A transcript released on April 21 by the Associated Press from a recent interview reveals 16 instances where the president’s comments are marked as “unintelligible.” Here’s a glimpse:
TRUMP: You have to love people. And if you love people, such a big responsibility. (unintelligible) You can take any single thing, including even taxes. I mean we’re going to be doing major tax reform. Here’s part of your story, it’s going to be a big (unintelligible). Everybody’s saying, “Oh, he’s delaying.” I’m not delaying anything. I’ll tell you the other thing is (unintelligible). I used to get great press. I get the worst press. I get such dishonest reporting with the media. That’s another thing that really has — I’ve never had anything like it before. It happened during the primaries, and I said, you know, when I won, I said, “Well the one thing good is now I’ll get good press.” And it got worse. (unintelligible) So that was one thing that a little bit of a surprise to me. I thought the press would become better, and it actually, in my opinion, got more nasty.
Another example:
TRUMP: I get treated so badly. Yesterday, about the thing, you know when I said it’s a terrorism … it may be. I said it may be a terrorist attack and MSNBC