Donald Trump Talks Like a Nine-Year Old, Researcher Finds

GOP Frontrunner Connects by Speaking at Fourth-Grade Level

“I went to an Ivy League school. I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words,” Donald Trump bragged to South Carolina supporters in December. He followed that up by saying, “there is no better word than stupid.”

Two anti-Trump attack ads recently have mocked Trump’s “best words,” using the candidate’s own words to indict him.

But one researcher says Trump’s tactics are so successful because he talks like a nine-year old.

Chelsea Coe, writing at WIRED, notes supporters like Trump because “Trump’s style is refreshingly direct. They say they like that Trump doesn’t worry about political correctness or sounding ‘like a politician.'”

It’s true, Trump doesn’t sound like a politician. An authoritarian dictator, perhaps, but not a politician.

“Such language has helped Trump accomplish the very un-stupid feat of connecting with a disgruntled electorate—and it is propelling him toward the nomination,” Coe writes.

“From a linguistic point of view, it turns out, part of the trick is not to assume a high level of literacy. According to my analysis of language during the Republican debates, the language that Trump uses consistently registers at the fourth grade level.”

A fourth-grade level. 

A man who talks like a nine-year old is about to become the Republican Party’s nominee for president.

 

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
Hat tip: NY Post