A Columbia linguistics professor used classic TV sitcom “The Simpsons” to illustrate the childlike mentality of President Donald J. Trump.
Professor John McWhorter appeared on “CNN Tonight” with Don Lemon last week where he criticized the president’s problematic behavior and his seeming inability to act like an adult. Instead, Trump conducts himself like a three-or four-year-old, McWhorter argued.
“For Trump, it’s about his ego,” he began. “It’s not about what actually happened, it’s about the way he would like it to be.”
“It’s a very mediocre, although familiar way of looking at things because it’s the way a toddler does,” McWhorter added.
The professor went to claim it was wrong for critics to paint Trump as mendacious or dishonest, as opposed to a flat-out fool who doesn’t know any better.
” … We are wrong to think of him as mendaciously lying like Mr. Burns,” McWhoerter said, referencing the show’s evil power plant chairman. “It is not like ‘I’m gonna say something wrong.’ Nothing of the sort. He doesn’t, frankly, think in that way at all. He’s more Homer Simpson than Mr. Burns. He’s not thinking in that way but the problem is he’s the president. So, we have to understand this is a natural phenomenon it wouldn’t occur to him [that’ he’s become mendacious. He’s being himself. He’s three.”
At this, Lemon wondered if the president’s antics could be part of a scheme to garner news or publicity around him. The professor argued this couldn’t be true, however, because such a move would require premeditation, which he claimed Trump is incapable of.
Watch more of the discussion above.
