Vice President JD Vance has come out with one of his most spurious claims yet, after stating that President Donald Trump “chooses his words carefully.”
Vance took to Elon Musk’s X to make a general point that there is too much talking and not enough action in U.S. politics. “So much of American diplomacy has become pure performance—an obsession with *saying* this or that,” he mused.
Vance, whose tiny pants recently caused a social media storm, then claimed that Trump is “hated” because he is a famously broody do-er. He said: “The reason the failed establishment hates President Donald J. Trump is because he chooses his words carefully and, more importantly, is much more focused on *doing*.”
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Trump has certainly been busy doing since he took over from the Biden Administration, signing 70 plus executive orders, a 40-year record, as of Feb. 20. However, a traditional criticism of Trump is that he opens his mouth first and thinks later, far from choosing his words carefully as his understudy claimed.
Back in Oct. 2016, before his first term as president began, Geoffrey Pullum, a linguist at University of Edinburgh, actually said Trump’s communication style was pure chaos.
“His speech suggests a man with scattered thoughts, a short span of attention, and a lack of intellectual discipline and analytical skills,” Pullum told Vox.
More recently, in September last year, linguist John McWhorter said Trump’s style of communication made it sound like he had been drinking, despite the 78-year-old being staunchly anti-booze. “That’s rambling, the verbal equivalent of somebody being extremely drunk,” he said on NPR’s Morning Edition podcast.
CNN recently reported that Trump “lies” a lot, with both scripted and “ad-libbed” fibs. Just yesterday (Monday) he was fact-checked in person by French President Emmanuel Macron during a U.S. visit.
Trump was talking about Ukraine aid inside the White House when he said the U.S. provided $350 billion to the country. Macron put his hand on the president’s arm and set the record straight. “No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60 percent of the total effort,” he said, adding that it was “real money.”
“If you believe that, it’s OK with me,” Trump said carefully about the stone cold fact, seemingly suggesting it was a lie or half truth.
Meanwhile, a site set up a section to fact-check Trump’s claims and it is positively brimming with evidence that he might not actually always choose his words so carefully.
PolitiFact, by the Poynter Institute, has found Trump to have fallen foul of their ‘Truth-O-Meter’ twice already this month.
