JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

So, I just want to compliment many of the people in the room. I have great respect for the news and great respect for freedom of the press and all of that.

— Donald Trump, at a Jan. 11 news conference, addressing the news media’s handling of reports that Russia had compromising information about him.

I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth.

— Donald Trump, in a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency on Jan. 21.

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If your reaction to those two quotes is “Huh?”, I’m sure you’re not alone.

Sooo, which do you think it is: Does our president loathe the press? Or does he have “great respect” for it? And how, given those two polar-opposite statements, are we to know where our president stands — not only on that issue but any number of others, many more important than how he feels about the press?

John McWhorter

Gratefully, an English Literature  professor at Columbia University named John McWhorter had some excellent suggestions in The New York Times Sunday. In a commentary titled “How to Listen to Donald Trump Every Day for Years,” McWhorter broken open the pineapple containing the code to deciphering our president’s waterfall of words.

Here are some of the key points McWhorter makes:

:: We Americans are accustomed to hearing our presidents talk in quasi-speech form, even when they’re speaking extemporaneously, such as at news conferences. We are not used to hearing a president “talk” in a style similar to how we might chat with each other by the office water fountain.

The important thing to keep in mind, McWhorter says, is that while we are expecting Trump to “speak,” he is actually just “talking.”

Evidence of Trump’s “talking,” the writer said, can be found in his “false starts, jumpy inserts and repetition,” such as when he laces his comments with interjections like, “Believe me,” and “OK?”

Far from shocking, McWhorter says, it was just a matter of time before a talker, if you will, reached the highest office in the land:

“America’s relationship to language has become more informal by the decade since the 1960s, just as it has to dress, sexual matters, culinary habits, dance and much else.”

Trump’s style befuddles the news media because, as McWhorter observes, “it is novel that someone in the Oval Office can’t be bothered with trying to be articulate.”

To get one’s arms around Trump’s style, McWhorter continues, members of the media should hark back to Keegan-Michael Key’s “anger translator” routine with President Obama at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2015. (Obama: “…Because despite our differences, we count on the press to shed light on the most important issues of today.” Key: “…And we can count on Fox News to terrify old white people with some nonsense…Sharia law is coming to Cleveland. Run for the damn hills!”)

It’s folly, then, to try to parse Trump’s every statement or attempt to follow him through his oratorical maze.

In closing McWhorter says…

“I think of Theodore Roosevelt. While he was quite articulate on all levels, he was an ebullient, ever-curious person, about whom an observe once said, with affection, ‘You must always remember that the president is about 6.’ Linguistically, I listen to the man who is now president as if he were roughly 12 years old. That way, he is always perfectly understandable.”