The change in linguistic facility could be strategic maybe Trump thinks his supporters like to hear him speak simply and with more passion than proper syntax. Had he not dropped out of the election, had he not made the gaffes about the watch dogs and the guard dogs, if he didn’t have three or four bad days - and they were real bad days - he could have conceivably won this crazy election.” There are numerous contrasting examples from decades ago, including this - with sophisticated grammar and syntax, and a coherent paragraph-length chain of thought - from a 1992 Charlie Rose interview: “Ross Perot, he made some monumental mistakes. Other sentences simply don’t track: “From the time I took office til now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. Again, from the AP: “If they don’t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA,” and, “I don’t support or unsupport” - leaving out a “me” in the first and an “it” (or more specific noun) in the second. In an interview conducted earlier this month, President Trump explains the timing of James Comey's firing. And last week, he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago.” “We’ll do some questions, unless you have enough questions,” Trump told a February press conference. Some sentences, or partial sentences, would, if written, make a second-grade teacher despair. … In fairness to Trump, he’s 70, so some decline in his cognitive functioning over time would be expected.” “There are clearly some changes in Trump as a speaker” since the 1980s, said Michaelis, who does not support Trump, including a “clear reduction in linguistic sophistication over time,” with “simpler word choices and sentence structure.

They noted, however, that the same sort of linguistic decline can also reflect stress, frustration, anger, or just plain fatigue.īen Michaelis, a psychologist in New York City, performed cognitive assessments at the behest of the New York Supreme Court and criminal courts and taught the technique at a hospital and university. The experts noted clear changes from Trump’s unscripted answers 30 years ago to those in 2017, in some cases stark enough to raise questions about his brain health.

Reporter’s notebook: I never thought I’d be writing about Trump’s mind STAT and the experts therefore considered only unscripted utterances, not planned speeches and statements, since only the former tap the neural networks that offer a window into brain function. They want to see the wall.”įor decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. My base, which is a big base I think my base is 45 percent. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it - you’ve been to many of the rallies. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month: Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.” In an interview from 1987, Donald Trump talks about poverty and homelessness in the US. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More

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