Trump said he's a genius.

That's how his detractors paraphrase what Trump wrote.

What Trump actually wrote in two tweets is that throughout his life two of his greatest assets have been his mental stability and being, like, really smart. Then he continues recounting his chief accomplishments, success in business and entertainment and becoming president of the United States. Finally, he thinks that would qualify as not merely smart but genius, and very stable genius at that.

He thinks what he did was genius. He did not say, "I am a genius."

[In Sixty Grit's previous post about Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, the episode with Michael Richards, he describes playing chess with a homeless man. His imitation of how the homeless man sounds is hilarious and pathetic. Richards brags about elevating his chess mastery to a very high level, then challenging the homeless man who kicks his butt immediately twice. The homeless man is playing at a level beyond world masters, confirmed by an actual world master. The man is hopeless at everything about being a human being  in society and relating to other people, but plays chess on a whole different plane of existence. He wins in under two minutes. Then refuses to play anymore because such losers are intolerable.]

Boom. Trump just framed the discussion and provided the vocabulary for it. No matter what his detractors say, no matter their attack, they will use his language to deride him. Hereafter the word genius will be associated with Trump. And not the word "stupid." He did not tweet a defense, "I am not stupid" Like Nixon is known forever for not being a crook. So that's not the word they will use. He delivered the vocabulary, he delivered the framing, he provided the patterns of thought. And that framing is rather ... genius.

Here is Scott Adams's blog with his podcast.

Scott discusses this at some length. His angle on Trump is through persuasion, and Adams is fascinated observing Trump embody all that he teaches about the art of persuasion. Adams believes these tweets are genuine media and persuasion genius. He thinks these recent tweets are perfect. He finds them beautiful and he explains why. But not all of his commenters agree.

One thing that Adams said that sticks out for me is that Trump really is gifted with a particularly beneficial "stack of talents" that together form a unique genius. He's good at a bunch of things that work well together. One of the things that he's good at is humor. He's good at matching people. He's good at persuasion. He's good at dominating the conversation. He's good at handling shame, he's good at risk, strategy, negotiating, you can just keep going. Adams spreads his hand expansively. If you looked at any specific talent you can argue he's not the funniest man you've ever met, he's not the best negotiator, but you can't find somebody who has all of that in the same package.

I never thought of that.

Adams focuses on Trump's use of the word "like" knowing that it is not a useful word. It does not belong. It sticks out glaringly. To Adams it is a clue to understanding what Trump is doing. Trump uses the ridiculous word to deny any sense of elitism, to fit in, to bring down his language to a level that is common. To control how people think. To persuade.

So that's that. And Adams's podcast is interesting on its own. Recommended.

At the same time, at Legal Insurrection, William Jacobson picks up the same theme delivered by Anti-Trump Professor George Lakoff, a cognitive scientist who says that constant repetition of Trump's messages embeds them deeply in the brains of millions of people.

Lakoff provides linguistic insights that are nicely described, backed by scientific study, and correct, while still being impressively dull politically. It's the weirdest thing reading them side-by-side, his elaboration on linguistic effectiveness on cognition, that matches Adams's own insights as cartoonist expert in sharp short writing, while spewing utterly vapid partisan axioms.

Burnished and shining set against dull, uninteresting and uninspired out of the same person with passion.

For example, the taxonomy of Trump tweets in diagram, 1) preemptive framing, 2) diversion, 3) deflection, 4) trial balloon.

Trump uses media as a weapon to control the news cycle. Trump knows whoever frames first tends to win. They get retweeted so he dominates social media and media falls for it every time. Media thinks they're undermining him but that's not how the human mind works. As scientist, Lakoff insists that repeating helps Trump. His tweets focus attention on himself and it doesn't matter if they're nonsense because of "focusing illusion." Lakoff believes this is largely why Trump was elected in the first place. (!) How rude. Lakoff must overlook so much and assume so very much to settle on that comforting self-aggrandizing conclusion.

Constant repetition embeds Trump's tweets deeply into the brains of millions of people. The constant attacks increase his credibility with his base.

Then Lakoff goes off the rails. Imagine keeping focus on what really matters; dismantling government, Republicans robbing the middle class and poor to pay off the rich, Mueller's investigation into Trump Organization betrayal of America.  Imagine if we took back our power from this disgraceful man. 

[Highlighting mine.]

Finally, Lakoff says to think of Trump as puppeteer, his tweets as the strings, and anyone who retweets him as the puppet. He ends with a link to NYT article about Trump and Russia.

So then, knowing all that doesn't prevent Lakoff from making the same mistake by his own displaced loyalty to party that he projects onto his observed subjects. And being expert in language and cognition he's predisposed to weight language as the crucial factor. Without acknowledging he's accepted the exact same persuasion that he sees in his opposition. He's talking about himself without knowing it. It's weird.

See, the rest of us are reading Trump's actions, and we're pleased with what we read in them, while entertained by his words and the disruption they cause.

Recommended. Plus the comments at Legal Insurrection are excellent as usual.