I Don’t Need to Read.


AP_Poll_Campaign_2016-Issue

The Washington Post has done the regular quizzing about the reading habits of Presidential nominees. Turns out Donald doesn’t think he needs to read at all. Somehow, I am not at all surprised.

…He said in a series of interviews that he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”

[…]

One day last month, Trump had a visit from a delegation of prominent executives in the oil, steel and retail industries, and one of the executives told Trump that the Chinese were taking advantage of the United States. “He said, ‘I’d like to send you a report,’ ” Trump recalled. “He said, ‘I’d love to be able to send you’ — oh boy, he’s got a lengthy report, hundreds of pages. . . . I said, ‘Do me a favor: Don’t send me a report. Send me, like, three pages.’ ”

Trump said reading long documents is a waste of time because he absorbs the gist of an issue very quickly. “I’m a very efficient guy,” he said. “Now, I could also do it verbally, which is fine. I’d always rather have — I want it short. There’s no reason to do hundreds of pages because I know exactly what it is.”

Full story here.

Comments

  1. says

    I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good thing, because in spite of Trump’s overinflated opinion of himself, he’s not smart. He’s smart enough to pull off cons, but that doesn’t take great intelligence, people do that all the time.

    When you aren’t all that smart, reading really fucking helps. I am biased though, I tend to look sideways at people who are proud of not reading.

  2. Pierce R. Butler says

    He doesn’t really mean it -- he just wants to capture the Dubya vote.

    /s!

  3. rq says

    Oh I’m a big believer in reading, too. I’m just surprised he’s so loud and proud about something that isn’t really going to help him in the long run…

  4. cicely says

    I see this as a cynical ploy to pull in the anti-intellectualists lurking in the Evangelical Far Right.
    Especially taken together with his selection (however reluctantly) of Pence as his running mate.
    --

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