POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

“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.”

Donald Trump, reported by Daily Kos, 09 Aug. 2015: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/9/1558359/-This-is-an-actual-Trump-sentence?detail.

Although it is not cited in the article, this quotation seems to illustrate the point made in an article written by Daniel Libit for CNBC, “Transcribers’ Agony: Frustrated Not by What Trump Says but How He Says It.” These are the opening paragraphs of that article:

“Few conventions in political campaign coverage are as straightforward and unassailable as quoting a public figure verbatim. After all, how can there be any doubt when you are putting down the exact words someone says?

“And yet, as with many other parameters of the process, Donald Trump has complicated this, too.

“The rhetorical challenges of Trump are not just those of substance—or the lack thereof, but of syntax—and the lack thereof.

“His unscripted speaking style, with its spasmodic, self-interrupting sentence structure, has increasingly come to overwhelm the human brains and tape recorders attempting to quote him.

“Trump is, simply put, a transcriptionist’s worst nightmare: severely unintelligible, and yet, incredibly important to understand.

“Given how dramatically recent polls have turned on his controversial public utterances, it is not hyperbolic to say that the very fate of the nation, indeed human civilization, appears destined to come down to one man’s application of the English language—and the public’s comprehension of it. It has turned the rote job of transcribing into a high-stakes calling.”

Libit’s complete article can be found at: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/15/transcribers-agony-frustrated-not-by-what-trump-says-but-how-he-says-it.html.