Trumpspeak: The man vs. the algorithm
From The Baffler:
IT’S BEEN OBSERVED THAT DONALD TRUMP has an . . . unusual speaking pattern. But can something so fragmented and disjointed as the president’s circumlocutory echolalia be described as possessing anything so ordered as a “pattern?” Is Trumpspeak distinguishable from a purely stochastic process—i.e., a randomly distributed array of word-noise? More specifically, how might a text-generating algorithm supplied only with Trump’s trademark diction generate something discernibly different from the man’s own speeches? Indeed, might the forty-fifth president of the United States be nothing more than a stochastic device rumbling around in a bright orange carcass, outfitted in a poorly fitting power suit?
In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I decided to find out. Using as a corpus this compilation of POTUS 45’s painfully transcribed speeches and interviews, I trained a Markov chain to generate the following paragraphs of Trumpese. The algorithm requires that each paragraph be seeded with an initial word, so I went with the agreeably broad “USA” and “America” for starters. Tellingly, during the first run-through I actually had to get rid of a method within the algorithm that was trying to eliminate duplicates, because one of the keys to Trump-ese is constant, indeed hectoring, repetition. You can judge for yourself how closely they approximate the original:
USA! And in our freedom and peace, and small business tax rates in large crowd at 4 in Texas, they want to fix our will serve as it joking, totally safe neighborhoods for America is indeed making our citizens nor the Environmental Protection Agency. He’ll do we have been calling for me, excuse me fairly. Fox has led down the words to fix our faith, not waver, even more closely than an A-plus in Warsaw Uprising alive. Between its true character.
America
America will seek to Maine four years, 14 years by the Coast Guard officer right now. We will get to you have a daily basis. And I see the cost. Washington was no substitute for everyone to tell you see just say that, and our way to protest and its resources to New York.
More... https://thebaffler.com/latest/trumpspeak
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We think of some of our greatest presidents mainly because they were such great speakers - and their most memorable quotes are part of the national lexicon: Lincoln, FDR, JFK and I'd also include Obama, who was very precise in whatever he said. And then there's Trump... 
