Trump and the Teleprompter – August 28, 2016

Robertson Davies wrote an essay called “Ham and Tongue” back in 1977, when he obviously did not have Donald Trump and the teleprompter in mind.  But what he wrote back then fits today – you can always tell when Trump is speaking words written for him, and when he’s saying what he thinks at the moment.  “Politicians were probably the first to discover that the script might as well be prepared by somebody else…  Politicians – slapdash fellows with a boundless faith in the gullibility of mankind – all too often give speeches which are as new to them as to the audience, and not infrequently they come upon words that are unfamiliar to them and ideas that surprise them.”  (I have taken the liberty of changing some of Davies’ past tenses to present.)