Literary Corner: Confidence

Trump in 2018 stumping for Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis in his beloved shtik about how "anyone can act presidential". 

Today, in another blast from the past, somebody tweeted an example of Trump actually attempting to act presidential in the normal sense of the term, during the last presidential campaign, reading a fairly simple statement about the kind of thing presidents normally talk about and getting tripped up by the Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit. Not in the most familiar way when he realizes he's misread a word in the text and tries to cover up the error—in this case he's looking for an error but can't find one; in fact he's not making any mistakes (other than a minor glitch between "the" and "an"), but can't believe it because he doesn't know what it means, what he's hearing coming out of his mouth sounds like complete nonsense to him, and he's really panicked.

So Think of That

by Donald J. Trump, July 2020

consumer confidence
which is great
that's a great number
to me because
that means confidence
is really good

if you don't have good consumer confidence
it's like life
if you don't have confidence
then you're not going to do very well
consumer confidence has risen twelve points
since April and six-month job expectations hit
the all-time
an all-time high
so think of that for a second
with all we go through
with all of the trials and tribulations
that we read about every night
much of it totally fake news
fortunately
and if the consumer didn't get it
you wouldn't have good consumer confidence

we have
consumer confidence has risen
twelve points since April
an all-time high
think of that