Your Handy Guide to Translating Trump in the Debate
After two debates, it’s gotten easier to parse Trump’s rhetoric. That is to say, he often means the opposite of what comes out of his mouth. Here’s how to translate into plain English.
Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
So we’ve watched Donald Trump bumble and stumble his way through two debates now, snorting, sniffing, bellowing, interrupting. I think by now we’ve got his game down. Herewith for tonight, a short and handy Trump Debate Tic Translation Document. Let’s do it like this.
When Trump says: “To tell you the absolute truth.”
What Trump means is: “Okay, here, I’m really lying my ass off.”
When Trump says: “Wrong.”
What Trump means is: “Yes, actually, that’s true. Fuck you.”
When Trump says: “sniff...”
What Trump means is: “Okay, she just said something that the remaining non-sociopathic 4 percent of me knows to be true. Ouch.”
When Trump says: “Believe me, folks”
What Trump means is: “I’m totally making this shit up”
When Trump says: “In every poll”
What Trump means is: “In zero polls”
When Trump says: “Blumenthal”
What Trump means is: “Personally, I’m okay with some Jews. Some. Roy was a Jew. But he wasn’t like most of them. Nice short name, Cohn. But this name, I like saying this name, saying it real slow...”
When Trump says: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do.”
What Trump means is: “Look at this place; there’s not one decent, fuckable piece of ass that I can see in this whole hall. Well, except Ivanka.”
When Trump says: “I will put Crooked Hillary in jail.”
What Trump means is: “I know I probably can’t do that, but these boobs who are voting for me love this bullshit, so fuck it, why not?”
When Trump says: “Hillary is only in it for the power, the money, and herself.”
What Trump means is: “I am only in it for the power, the money, and myself, but look, those are the only three good reasons to be in anything.”
When Trump says: “ISIS will be taken care of.”
When Trump means is: “That Baghdadi. Have people seen his hands? The smallest. Like ever.”
When Trump says: “And we need to take down those artificial lines between the states, and we’ll have competition like you’ll never believe.”
What Trump means is: “Is this question over yet? Soooo boring. Hey, that one over there in the red, she has a pretty nice rack.”
When Trump says: “I was against the war in Iraq.”
What Trump means is: “I was against losing the war in Iraq, OK?”
When Trump says: “Why don’t you interrupt her, Chris?”
What Trump means is: “You little shit, just wait until Trump News Network.”
When Trump says: “This election is rigged.”
What Trump means is: “If I say this enough, enough idiots out there will actually buy it, and there’ll still be millions of people who want to come stay in my hotels, which frankly I’m kind of nervous about.”
When Trump says: “She’s got tremendous hatred in her heart.”
What Trump means is: “I’ve got tremendous hatred in my heart.”
You get the picture. Take to the twitters and try some yourself.