Trump’s Interesting Words
I don’t believe it takes any skill at all to see that Donald Trump is not honest, changes facts, says whatever he feels regardless of the truth. It’s clear he doesn’t care. But more often than not, he says things that reveal more than he wants to.
In the interview with the New York Times that was released yesterday, it’s fascinating what he says.
First off, Jeff Session didn’t take the job as Trump suggests and then immediately recuse himself.
No, Jeff Sessions was confirmed on February 8 and didn’t recuse himself until March 2, 2017, after he was exposed by the Washington Post on March 1 to have met with Sergey Kislyak twice, which he had previously denied in his confirmation testimony.
Trump then says, “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.”
Well, if there was no collusion, and Jeff Sessions didn’t have anything going on with Russia, why would Sessions have told Trump “before he took the job” that he would or wouldn’t recused himself? It makes no sense to even think like that. An honest person would never even consider that, but a deceptive person in collusion would. Especially if someone he counted on to be loyal turned on him.
Ironically, when you look at the statement Sessions gave in his recusal, he doesn’t take responsibility for recusing himself. He says in referring to the Department of Justice, “They said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation.” That’s as passive as you can get! That’s a man who doesn’t want to take the fall and give excuses just like Trump. Two apples from the same cart.
They tell me I have to do this so I am. Don’t blame me!
Trump obviously trusted Sessions to stick by him and NEVER (Trump’s word) recuse himself if they came under fire, which did not happen. Why would Trump even expect that? That’s not the law of our country, but Trump seems to think he is always above the law, which he continued to reveal when he said later in the interview that the FBI reports to the president. Um, no, that’s not correct Trump. Time and time again, Trump he acts like he is an authoritarian, not the president of a democracy.
I do not believe Sessions will resign unless he believes it is in his own best interest. If he can stay for his own benefits, and stick it back to Trump any way he can, he most certainly will. I don’t trust either of these men farther than I can see them.
It’s so ironic that all the people in the Trump campaign have been involved with Russia and oops, forgot to tell anyone. A mistake? No, and if you believe that, you are high risk to be a victim in your life. Please take my warning seriously.
Maybe the reason Trump doesn’t think he is the leader of a democracy is because he was not elected in a democratic way but rather as a result of a highly flawed system with corruption such as gerrymandering and active voter suppression built into it?
I’d be interested in hearing which of our presidents, according to this criteria, were ever elected in a democratic way. I see voter suppression, gerrymandering, starting before 2016? So, I am wondering what you mean.
The US absolutely has problems relating to democracy and the issues I listed is some of the ones that no longer makes the country a full democracy but rather a “flawed” one according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index and several other rankings. What makes it even worse in the case of Trump’s election is that he received 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. As much as I disagree with him it s not difficult to see why he doesn’t think of himself as a leader of a democracy and that he can bend the rules.
thanks … i learn something all the time
When I read Trump’s statements about Sessions, they read to me like “He didn’t do the job I hired him to do!” Since Sessions is still attorney general, the only way that makes sense is if he expected Sessions to preside over any Russia investigation (in other words, obstruct any such investigation). To me, it sounds like when he said he fired Comey because of Russia, and everyone went, “Did he just admit it?” He pretty much said he expected Sessions to have his back on Russia and then he didn’t have it. It also sounds like he thinks the president “hires” the AG. Doesn’t work that way.
Looks like I’m a high risk of being a victim unfortunately, cause my interpretation of this:
“Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.”
Was:
“Since I, Trump, know Sessions never did anything wrong, there’s no reason he should have recused himself. However, if he had had some doubts and/or knew of his own misdeeds, he should have let me know that he was bowing out (and not provided me with a reason as to why he was bowing out), and then I wouldn’t have wasted time going through this whole process and could have put that energy somewhere else.”
That is to assume only guilty people recuse themselves. Guilt or innocence has no bearing on recusal. Only conflict of interest matters.
Oh, that makes sense! Something I hadn’t thought of as part of the equation.
Trump has poor skills in abstract reasoning, probably because he is practically illiterate. In this blog post, I explain how Trump could have gotten a degree from an Ivy League university despite being practically illiterate. http://nottrivialbook.com/2017/01/20/can-donald-trump-read/
I read about half of your blog post and had to stop because it seems to have nothing to do with the reality I know as a person who is dyslexic, who knows many other dyslexic, You should do more reading yourself about dyslexia–by researchers and people with the condition. I have never read any researcher or expert or person with the condition call dyslexia a “brain disease”. It is a way that the brain processes information that is different from what is considered normal, although personally I don’t think is a normal way but a number of different ways. Illiteracy is not caused by dyslexia and dyslexia is not caused by lazy or poor teaching methods. Some but certainly not all people with dyslexia have trouble reading. And some methods of teaching literacy work better with some dyslexics. But just like autism–the condition manifests in different ways for different people. I hope that you get more education on this, because right now you seem to be spreading a lot harmful misinformation.
I wrote my book Not Trivial after having worked as an editor in medical and academic publishing for more than 25 years. As a result, I have read a lot of the scientific literature on brain disorders and literacy. Dyslexia is not a brain disease. Nor is dyslexia due to some “difference” in how the brain processes information. It is simply the result of a bad method of teaching reading. Instead of teaching students how to sound words out systematically from left to right, many teachers have been trained to teach students to recognize whole words as graphic designs (“sight words”), while paying little or no attention to the sounds encoded by the letters. Then, they teach children to use other kinds of contextual clues to guess what the text says. In other words, teachers have been trained to teach children strategies for hiding their inability to read. Unless the students figure out the phonetic code by themselves, they will remain functionally illiterate. I figured out the English phonetic code on my own at age 4, by analyzing the spelling of the rhyming words in my Dr. Seuss books. As a result, I could read at a 5th grade level by the end of first grade. My friend Don Potter has found that he can prevent dyslexia by using a good phonics-based method of teaching reading. He spends his summers curing the cases of dyslexia that arose in other teachers’ classrooms. Here’s his introductory video about how to use Hazel Loring’s Blend Phonics for teaching reading. If you study this method yourself, you will cure your own dyslexia. Best of luck! https://youtu.be/QVYdT8EHTpM
Wow, just wow. So phonic reading will cure my inability to tell right from left? I’ve never had trouble reading. I do have trouble with transposing letters and numbers and things that are too hard to explain here. Great if your friend is able to help anyone read, but let me paraphrase what I said earlier–inability to read is not necessarily a sign of dyslexia and dyslexia does not equal the inability to read. But you don’t care what I am say and it’s obvious you did not read my last comment. For what it’s worth I have always found a lot of value in seeing words as signs rather than groups of phonetic codes because that’s the way my mind works. I don’t have anything else to say.
The word “dyslexia” MEANS “poor reading.” If you do not have a problem with reading, you DO NOT HAVE DYSLEXIA. The underlying problem in dyslexia is that children have been taught to see words as signs rather than as a string of phonetic code. Your mind works that way because you were taught to look at text that way. It is a bad strategy that you were taught to use, not a weird quirk of your brain. As I explain in Not Trivial, the “sight word” method was introduced into the schools of Massachusetts at the same time that the labor movement arose. The “Lowell girls” who were working in the textile factories could read and write at a high level, thanks to universal free public education and an effective method of teaching reading. As a result, these factory workers were able to use their reading and writing skills to get the public to take their side when there was a dispute with the factory owners. The “sight word” method of teaching reading was a sneaky way to suppress literacy among the lower-class children who went to the common schools. Meanwhile, the rich people sent their children to private schools, or to elite public schools such as Boston Latin. Occasionally, the rich people’s schools also do a bad job of teaching reading. Donald Trump is not the only poor little rich boy who never learned to read. As I explained in Not Trivial, four of John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s sons, including Nelson Rockefeller, were functionally illiterate because they went to a “progressive” school that did not teach phonics.
I may be interpreting what you’re saying incorrectly, but I’m hearing you say that a great percentage of children are taught to read incorrectly.
Which would make me think there would be a corresponding illiteracy rate that matches that percentage. Is that what you’re saying?
In other words, if 75% of kids are taught wrong, then 75% can’t read … something like that.
Yes. The more heavily a school depends on “sight words” for teaching reading, the worse the problem with “dyslexia” is. However, some children eventually learn to read because they get outside tutoring or because they decode the phonetic system for themselves. http://nottrivialbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1929-Orton-article.pdf
In the county where I teach, “sight words” being the focal point of reading has gone the way of the dinosaur. On the other hand, there are some words that have to be memorized such as “the”. It’s phonetically friendly. Lol. Also, memorization is one of the strategies that people with dyslexia use in order to overcome their disability.
One of my best friends has dyslexia. They were diagnosed early on because of their difficulty with reading. They’ve done great though. Have a masters, a professional job and very smart. I think I figured out how to read myself in school–I come from a family of heavy-duty problem-solvers/achievers though I dd not teach myself (I have a niece who did) I had to make sense of what we were taught. I believe we were taught phonically. But I am a very visual thinker and think of words as images rather than sounds, until I wrote a lot, was a horrible speller. I still have my moments. Anyway in a conversation with my friend last night, I asked them if learning to read cured their dyslexia–they said NO. Also, as a substitute teacher I have worked with children who have difficulty with reading and math because they have problems with nailing down the orientation of the words–like where do you start and end. I’ve had some of that, but not to the extend that some of these kids do. So they need ways to demarcate what line of numbers they are looking at or text or even what word comes after which word. Anyway dyslexia definitely is a lot more than having difficulty reading. I support any effort to make learning easier and hopefully more enjoyable for all.
To learn phonics, you need to memorize about 70 basic rules. Once you master those rules, you can read tens of thousands of words. You can even make a reasonable guess of how to spell any word in your working vocabulary. In contrast, the sight word method would require you to memorize those words as graphic designs, while paying little or no attention to the sounds that the letters represent. The sight word method requires extraordinary feats of memorization. Dyslexia is not a true disability. It is the result of the failure to teach phonics.
Fluency in language is a combination of skills. I have students in ESL who can “read” an entire book by sounding out the words and have no idea what the meaning of what they’re reading is. Similarly, my 6 year old had heard me read the same books so many times, she has them memorized and sometimes pretends to “read” by looking at the pictures and words and remembering what they say. In Kindergarten, my daughter learns sight words, sounding out words by knowing the sounds letters make, and associating words with pictures. No one thing is the way to teach someone to read. We do everything.
Thank you for your comments, Vibrina. I’m a reading teacher and not all people with dyslexia are the same as you said. 🙂 For example, Patricia Polacco, author of “Thank you, Mr. Falkner” is also a person with dyslexia; however, the disability didn’t stop her from becoming an award winning author. Other than that, people with dyslexia can also struggle with math, especially since the disorder affects how people interpret symbols such as numbers.
Schools that use bad methods of teaching reading are also likely to use bad methods of teaching arithmetic. Also, children who have poor reading comprehension are going to have trouble with the “word problems” in math class. Many junior high school and high school math teachers have complained to me that some of their students can do calculations but cannot read the “word problems.”
I agree that the Sight word method is not effective. Interesting, but doesn’t someone with Dyslexia see words differently – visually . I mean they can see more than one word, two of them, one the mirror of the other etc….
The problem in “dyslexia” is that the person is not decoding the phonetics of the string of letters from left to right. Because “dyslexics” have been trained to analyze words as shapes, rather than as left-to-right strings of phonetic code, they may not appreciate the difference between was and saw. Children who have a natural tendency to scan from right to left (which is appropriate for some languages, such as Hebrew) are particularly likely to end up with “dyslexia” if they do not receive proper direct instruction in synthetic phonics.
Yes, interesting. I spoke with a mother of dyslexic children yesterday. Everything she said, and I asked her questions, only added credence to what you say about the visual vs auditory.
Funny how often the leader of the free world puts fairness to himself at the top of his priorities.
Another striking point in this NYT interview is where Trump denies clearing the Oval to talk to Comey alone. If he didn’t do that, then why did Sessions let it stand during his own testimony? He was directly questioned about that incident by Burr during the hearing and never said it didn’t happen. But now Trump is saying it didn’t happen? That doesn’t track for me.