Trump

Trump's communication disorder

In the early personal computer age there was an artificial intelligence program named Racter, which could make some level of conversation with the user. Mind you, it wouldn't be called artificial intelligence to today's standards. Some output by Racter went like this:

Racter: I`ll bet you really had a jellyfish. Most people in The Twilight Zone have jellyfish. The jellyfish is a very sick beast, or would you call it succumbing? When Juliet visited The Twilight Zone she was bitten by a weak jellyfish. Here's a story. Paul spoke "The millisecond is enrapturing!" Yet cold, terrific scientists will dream about yellow apartments or blue light-tubes. Helene cried to Paul inside of a van. It actually was a station wagon, and a millisecond in a station wagon is spooky. Now Diane and Paul were walking to a yellow house, and a hound rambled to them. Paul was infuriated. Enthralling. At all events Paul was incited while Diane drank bubbly wine. She and Paul crooned about their home, automobile and hi-fi.

Racter: Hortense Philosopher tells me you're a champ at football. Do you jog lots of miles when you play football? heh heh heh.. Seriously, you must have to score some hard touchdowns. Hortense Philosopher had a progressive gorilla back in The Twilight Zone. It and your jellyfish used to curse together, remember? Once when Jesse Helms was frowning in The Twilight Zone, Timothy Leary (he was there too) said " Jesse Helms, I'll take an original gorilla over a stuffy right-winger anyday". Concerning that issue: Humor is goodness speeded up and apathy slowed down. Is that true? I guess I'm really not sure. But then, as Nietzsche said, convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. Timothy Leary thought this was terrific: Progressive novelty and conservative tradition are enrapturing, yet a democrat or a right-winger never croons them drunkenly. A physicist cries: Get ready for a terrific dissertation or essay. The progressive dissertation is captivating, yet a right-winger might also speak the same essay. Right?

I was reminded of Racter when I heard Donald Trump say the following in an interview with Hugh Hewitt :

Trump: Well, she really thought I was doing very well. You know, I was being hit by a lot of questions, Hugh, and you know, every question, and if I wasn’t, the question of the people, of the other candidates, was you know, Mr. Trump said this, Mr. Trump said that. So in fact, somebody estimated it was 47% of the questions that was either to me or the other people with my name in them. And Ivanka thought I was just doing well. She, well, she wouldn’t, if I was doing badly, I don’t think she’d want to come up and say that. But she thought I was doing very well. And I got a lot of good reviews on it. You know, NBC said I came out second in their poll that they came out with yesterday in terms of who won the debate. But most of them, as you know, Drudge and Time Magazine and all, they had me down as coming down number first. But you know, I was, it was a little bit different, because so many of the questions were related to me. I don’t know whether they should be. I don’t think they should have been, other than I’m running number one. But I don’t think that’s the reason for it. I think the reason for it, you know, maybe it’s ratings. Who knows what it is?

And in this blog  I found the following “gem”:

Trump: Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

Would you really like an erratic president who talks like that in the Situation Room?