Donald Trump goes after Joe Biden's speech impediment

Politics
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It certainly does seem like people are trying to DEFEND Trump here or deflect/excuse his bad behavior.

My point extends behind the stuttering shaming. The bigger point is how does calling somebody “low IQ” a meaningful or constructive point. Having Person A having a lower IQ than Person B, does not mean Person A is superior. It doesn’t mean whatever comes out of Person B’s mouth is irrelevant.

Trump’s constant name calling and accusations of having a “low IQ” seems to imply that people with low IQs don’t matter, only people with high IQs matter. For somebody who is seen as the “leader of the free world”, degrading humans for not having a high enough IQ seems extremely shameful, ignorant, childish, and unpresidential.

Without diving too much into the condition/disorder (whatever you want to call it), stuttering is simply defined as a disruptive flow of regular speech patterns. It’s not purely, repeat the same words or intensive blocks in speech. It’s about somebody’s ability to NOT mangle words or sentences. For people like me and Biden, we have to work EXTRA hard to constantly speech clearly without issue. Public speaking and being in a stressful situations only INCREASES the stuttering to occur. It was pretty clear to me that Mr. Biden was uncomfortable making his speech, and that caused him to have problems with the proper flow of words.

Basically, it’s a neurological disorder. It has to do with brain and mouth not always lining up properly. For Trump to connect fumbling of words with lack of intelligence, is quite frankly illogical and re-enforces stereotyping of poor speech = lack of intelligence.

In short, Mr. Biden will mangle words or sentences, and it’s not his fault at all. Trump should know this, and find different ways to go after Biden. It’s low blow. It’s insulting. It’s illogical. It’s not something a President should be doing.

102

You have educated me on the subject. And I don’t disagree that Trump is over the line on many levels beyond or besides this.

I only point out that possibly, on this subject (Biden’s neurological anomaly) Trump is ignorant as was I.

2 Likes
103

I respectfully disagree.
As I stated earlier, whoever wrote Trump’s tweet used “tongue tied” for a reason.
That person may not have thought Biden was actually stuttering, but it was a subtle dig at his disability.
If/when Biden announces we’ll see how far this goes.

It’s hard to conceive, but I think 2020 is going to be much worse than 2016.

104

I’m not saying I’m right about Trump. I only know how little I understand about stuttering.

SInce we’ve never moved away from nasty I believe you’re right. We’ll probably see things we’ve never even thought of yet.

105

That was exactly the criticism we heard over and over relative to Bush.

“Non Political Organization”? No such organization exists since virtually everything is political these days.

106

Yes, the childish, petty name calling really gets old.

107

Says Trumps’ harshest critic.

108

Interesting coming from Trump’s harshest critic.

109

Look, the times I have seen Biden make mistakes, like ‘jobs is a 3 letter word’, I’ve never considered him a stutterer, and he does not seem to be a stutterer, probably because he’s worked at it successfully. But he just uses the wrong words at times, like what I mentioned above. My concept of a stutterer, is someone not coming out with the wrong words, but they know what the right words are, but have a tough time getting those right words out. The other time for example saying stand up to the paralyzed man, that is a gaffe, not having a tough time getting the word out. The other time he was introducing Obama, he said, ‘the Next President of the United States, Barak America’ he said that, that was a gaffe, that was not a hard time saying Obama, he wasn’t having a tough time to say it, he quite smoothly said Barak America… He just uses the wrong words, I have no concept of that being a stutterer unless you are telling me a stutterer quite smoothly chooses wrong words. Does a stutterer make a person change the word from 4 to 3 as far as the number of letters in the word jobs. Does a stutterer make a person tell a paralyzed person to stand up. Does a stutterer make a person say Barak America instead of Barak Obama Like this, he is not having a tough time coming up with the word, he says it very smoothly. This is him introducing Barak Obama:

In my view it is a gaffe. And I think it is fine he makes gaffe, it is funny, or at least I thought it was funny. I don’t think that making occasional gaffes is really all that bad. Does him being a stutterer make him change words, even when he doesn’t even seem to be stuttering at the time. You did educate me that he has a background of being a stutterer.

110

We have to call it the terrible 70s now I guess.

1 Like
111

Matt,

The main point here is the linkage to intelligence. If Trump simply said “Joe Biden got tongue-tied today. Come on Joe, run for President, so I can cream you”. There would be no issue, but when he throws in the IQ part, THEN you run into problems.

So yes, Biden makes gaffe. Some of them are funny, some of them are. not.

Biden does have to chew gum and rub his head at the same time, and probably wiggle his toes. On one hand, he has to focus on keeping his speech focused and pronounced words correctly, fluently, and timely, and at the same time, make sure he remembers what he wants to say. Sometimes we jump the gun in what we want to say, especially in stressful situations. Barack America is probably an example of him jumping the gun. I think he meant to say Barack Obama is a wonderful American.

Most stutters would NEVER want to run for President and would avoid public speaking in general. They know that it would put them in places, where they would easily mangle sentences, and would give rise to mockery. Basically you would be asking them to run into a burning building or play Russian Roulette. Biden deserves credit for having the nerve to actually go out in public and make his voice heard.

Normally I don’t talk about stuttering at all. I like to think I am just a normal guy, who talks sports, politics, movies, and so forth. But I just cannot stand the fact that Trump linked intelligence with proper speaking.

Most people do not realize that Biden is a stutterer. He like me, has gone through a lot of therapy and practice. For me personally, I use to stutter about 40-50% of the time, and now it’s only 8% of the time. Biden is probably the same deal. But the point here is that it doesn’t go away ever. You can mask it. You can work with a therapist to learn how to speak in sentences better or pronounce words better, but it’s still there.