Trump points tiny finger of blame at the economy. Includes his trademark "everyone knows that" tell.

[Miles Archer]

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election. The problem they have is that the economy is way too strong and we will soon be winning big on Trade, and everyone knows that, including China!
12:52 PM · Aug 15, 2019·Twitter for iPhone

Link to tweet

Tony Posnanski
@tonyposnanski
Replying to @realDonaldTrump

I crunched the numbers and I don’t think it is CNN, MSNBC, or The New York Times fault the economy is predicted to crash.

Based on my calculations it’s because you are a dumbfuck who has never been successful at anything.

Thanks!

1:02 PM · Aug 15, 2019·Twitter for iPhone

Link to tweet

[Newest Reality]

1. As I have been pointing out...

Part of defeating General Snake Oil, is to note how he uses language. Oh sure, his vocabulary has been analyzed to be not much higher than an average eight-year-old, but he has his tried and true patterns. The more we notice them, the less impact they have. Of course, there are the logical fallacies, but he is not as good at them because...logic. However, they are there, too. Catching them is fun and useful.

So, generalizations and missing referents are an aspect of his patterns. Note, patterns is an important word here, because repetition of patterns is another factor in this.

Universal Generalizations: Good examples are always, never, everyone, all, none, etc. In most cases you will not find a situation where any of those words applies accurately and they turn out to be exaggerations that are either poor use of language, habit, or for an ulterior motive. Watch out for people who use them far too often. "You know what they say about that!" Notice that there was no real content in that phrase?

You can also look for missing referents. They are commonly used and really creeping into discussions. Now, my "they" referred to the words, missing referents, but how often do you hear the word "they" used without one? This is a matter of specificity where one ask to then ask a question like, "Who, specifically, are you referring to?" Missing information is an important key and specificity is a good tool to use.

Among other patterns and linguistic patterns, there are also the modal operators of necessity: must, mustn't, should, shouldn't, have to, can't, etc. There is often a lot of presumption involved in manipulative language and those words will often pop-up without being challenged.

When it comes to what people consider to be a sort of broken, word salad from Captain Bonkers, that also has some value as a manipulative tool when you know how it works. When he talks and breaks up sentences and ideas, what are you doing in your mind? You may be trying to consciously or unconsciously figure out what the hell he is saying. This puts the listener in a distracted state of confusion while he inserts ideas, words, phrases and repeats them until you get to the end, which may not have a logical conclusions and that leaves you in limbo, and that works well if done right. It is a form of bypass.

There are many generalizations, deletions and distortions used in everyday language as a matter of fact and that is often for the sake of brevity, but they can be an important factor in clarity and fact finding in communication, as well as discerning the validity of what is said. People like our Psychopath-in-Chief utilize them often as a strategy.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Everyone knows that Trump is an illegitimate idiot

[riversedge]

3. tiny bubbles, in my wine