Is Trump Weaving Rambling, or Unraveling?

Wee Willie Keeler’s legendary hitting streak of 44 games (1894) was not broken until Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game streak 44 years later.

Keeler’s secret for his mastery of hitting? “Keep your eye clear and hit 'em where they ain't.” The first part is sometimes quoted as: “keep your eye on the ball.”

The art of persuasion follows half of Keeler’s advice. Yes, to persuade your audience you must keep your eye clear and on the ball. You must know what the goal of your persuading is, what you want your audience to do.

But persuasion flips the second half of Wee Willie’s script. In any kind of communication, however informal, you've got first to hit them where they are. You've got to know your audience, what their assumptions are and what their knowledge of issues is.

Believe me, nothing is harder than knowing your audience. The key to writing, it is also the key to teaching. Sussing out your audience, only then can you go there, take them by the hand, and lead them where you want them to go.

This is why listening is improvisers’ superpower. It is deployed among the improv players, each listening to and retaining everything that is done and said to build upon it, to move the narrative forward, call and response, yes, and….

The players also tune into the audience. Kelly Leonard of the Second City podcast (Getting to Yes, and….) explains that when Second City is brought in to help an advertiser hone a brand, they first make the case that listening to focus groups—what branding firms usually do—is not enough. “Focus groups lie…. You know what doesn't lie?” he asks, “A laugh…. Our point with them is capture the laugh. When you find what they're laughing at, there's going to be something interesting inside that, because it's true…. More true is when you have 100 people laugh at the same time at the same thing.” That’s what he urges them to build their brand on.

Second City schooling Madison Avenue!?! Watch out!

So, improvisers keep their eyes (and ears) clear. They go where their audiences are to lead them where they want the audience to go.

Trump’s Weaving

Trump demonstrated this superpower when, urged by his handlers to speak about the immigration problem, he turned it into the Mexican Wall. He heard their explosive reaction and it became a campaign plank, then a major policy of his presidency.

But that was 2015. Now, many are wondering if Trump can keep his eye on the ball. Is it a sign of mental decline? Or is he a brilliant weaver?

Here is an example from August 30th, where his audience probably understood the context for his explaining his “weaving.” He was answering the critics’ complaint about his free-associative rambling.

You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I'll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And it's like — and friends of mine that are, like, English professors — they say, it's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.

I’m also an English teacher, and I’m not always persuaded his weaving scintillates.

A Personal Confession

I'll admit I have a personal stake in the question. Frankly, I was shocked at Trump's embrace of weaving. For I too consider myself a weaver.

I stumbled on this idea when reading an account of the nine kinds of creation myths. There's the creator who creates out of nothing—the Romantic idea of the creative genius. There's the potter who shapes the universe. And so on. Then finally well down the line, batting ninth—and so perhaps the least impressive of the creators—is the weaver.

The weaver takes what pre-exists and forms it into something new. In weaving, the warp is the set of yarns stretched in place vertically on a loom before the weft is introduced horizontally during the weaving process.

Significantly, the weft, usually thrown by a shuttle, is introduced at the critical moment when strands of the warp are separated. The Greeks called such a moment Kairos. Greeks had two concepts of “time.” Chronos (χρόνος) refers to chronological or sequential time. Kairos signifies a good or proper time for action.

Kairos is the stuff of improvisers whose job it is to seize the moment.

Reading about weaving, I thought, yeah, I may be batting ninth, but that's what I do. This was confirmed a few years later when, in Rebecca McClanahan’s non-fiction workshop at Kenyon Review Summer Workshops, I learned about “braided narratives.” I thought, yep that's what I do. I so identify as weaver that I embraced it in my brand imagery.

You'll probably find some weaving and braiding here and throughout my blogs (and my books!).

But weaving works with things that are known, not just by the creator but presumably by the audience. First you’ve got to hit ’em where they are.

Weaving or Rambling?

So, maybe in explaining his rambling discourse—that he was a brilliant weaver—perhaps his audience knew that he was answering his critics. (It’s what he’s usually doing, after all, ever aggrieved). I won’t venture to unravel the free-associative electrocution vs. the shark riff. No one has managed to unravel that.

But how ‘bout this one:

I used to use the word incompetent. Now I just call them stupid. I went to an Ivy League school. I'm very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words. I have the … but there's no better word than stupid.

So, being generous, perhaps here his audience knew he was again answering his critics. They [the Dems/my critics] think I can’t talk presidential, but I know words. I have the best words, And—here’s the kicker—for the Dems there's just no better word than stupid. Trump’s typical aggrieved putdown. The Dems are stupid and Kamala is the stupidest of them all.

Not only does his base follow him, but the rebuttal of his critics fulfils his purpose. In its form and tone, it is proof of what he’s saying, that you don’t need to be formal to be presidential. To be presidential is to enact the executive function. Here he executes: see, you know what I mean. Trust me because I get the job done without a stick up my ass. I’m just like you, a regular guy.

Then there is the occasion when Trump was asked, what specific policy or law you would support that would be good for childcare in America? He answered:

But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that because — look, child care is child care — couldn't, you know, it's something — you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to, but they'll get used to it very quickly. And it's not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care.

The few policy oriented in his audience may have been able to follow and unpack this: We need childcare and it’s expensive. But my tariffs will pay for it.

Rather than that short, effective (executive) statement he segues into the politics of the tariffs: foreign nations will put up with it, trust me. Which of course they will do by raising prices by like amounts. Tariffs amount to a tax on American consumers. Avoiding that admission, he gets lost in abstractions—numbers, numbers—that leave his audience in the dark. Ignoring all that—either from personal ignorance or his understanding that the tax on families will far outweigh the gains—finally he brings it back to childcare: Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care. He’s managed to weave childcare back in but avoids committing to deploying the money raised by tariffs to do good for children.

Is this effective rhetoric? Well, it effectively skirts two policy issues which is his purpose: the tariffs will be costly to you and no, I won’t commit to childcare. But does it empower his base to decide whether he has a clear eye on their welfare? No, it doesn’t. He has his eye on his purpose, to obfuscate, but not on doing good the most disempowered Americans.

His rhetoric achieves its goal but part of that goal is to leave his base in the dark.

Professor John McWhorter of Columbia calls Trump’s ramblings “a jaunty character trait.” He reassures us that such informality is characteristic of normal conversation. But McWhorter adds another piece to the puzzle. Whether or not it is a sign of decline, Trump’s failure to hit his audience where it is, is for McWhorter yet another sign of his narcissism.

Intimates chewing the fat about things mutually understood get the job done. But Trump, stringing together insights with no outwardly discernible connection, just chews his own fat. But he makes no effort to meet other people where they are.…

Presidents should have a responsibility to speak outwardly and above, communicating to and for us, not just to themselves. Trump’s “weave” can be amusing, but it is yet another attribute that proves him — almost every time he opens his mouth — to be unfit for office. (The New York Times, Sept. 5, 2024)

 Trump’s dark improvising effectively creates division and a cult built on blind faith. The improvisations that we love—Second City, Freestyle Love Supreme, and SNL—build communities empowered to know and to feel connected and united.