This article appeared in The Washington Post. It is about H.R. McMaster, who is Trump’s much-admired National Security Advisor.
In the midst of a detailed discussion of the challenges in Afghanistan and the difficulty of both projecting American strength and detaching from foreign wars, the following paragraphs appear:
Among his biggest challenges was holding the attention of the president. In classified briefings, Trump would frequently flit between subjects. “We moved very quickly from news to intelligence to policy with very little clarity on which lanes we were in,” said a U.S. official who took part in the briefings. “McMaster would act like the tangents didn’t happen and go back to Point 2 on his card.”
Trump had little time for in-depth briefings on Afghanistan’s history, its complicated politics or its seemingly endless civil war. Even a single page of bullet points on the country seemed to tax the president’s attention span on the subject, said senior White House officials.
“I call the president the two-minute man,” said one Trump confidant. “The president has patience for a half-page.”
Is it his age? Is it his very poor education in a private school? Or is it that he is not interested in foreign policy? Maybe if they were discussing the Miss Universe pageant or golf, he could stay focused for more than two minutes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My guess is he has an executive function weakness (decreased working memory) and learning disabilities that were not properly remediated. He is lucky that he was from the top of the economic food chain and has had the ability to hire people that could get him to where he has landed.
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As well as some emotional health issues most likely as well (with narcissm heading the top of the list as well as being a bully.)
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As Rick Lavoie points out, a lot of LD students have the issue of paying attention to everything, making it difficult to focus intently on one thing. Cognitive decline withaging just makes things worse.
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disability?
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Prospective teachers must be certified and pass many tests, including being observed in classrooms, before they are hired, and, then, are on probation before earning tenure.
Why is something similar not the case with the most powerful/dangerous office on the planet? Why isn’t there a basic history/social studies/civics/literacy exam, both written and oral, administered to all candidates for President of the U.S.?
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Why Is Donald Trump Still So Horribly Witless about the World? | The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-is-donald-trump-still-so-horribly-witless-about-the-world?mbid=nl_170805_Daily&CNDID=45272181&spMailingID=11630713&spUserID=MTgwNzgwOTcyMzEyS0&spJobID=1220400046&spReportId=MTIyMDQwMDA0NgS2
Max Boot, a lifelong conservative who advised three Republican Presidential candidates on foreign policy, keeps a folder labelled “Trump Stupidity File” on his computer.
Six months into the Trump era, foreign-policy officials from eight past Administrations told me they are aghast that the President is still so witless about the world. “He seems as clueless today as he was on January 20th,” Boot, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. Trump’s painful public gaffes, they warn, indicate that he’s not reading, retaining, or listening to his Presidential briefings. And the newbie excuse no longer flies.
“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former Presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp, who worked at the Pentagon during the Ford Administration and at the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration, reflected. “He has an almost studious rejection of the type of in-depth knowledge that virtually all of his predecessors eventually gained or had views on.”
“The President has little understanding of the context”—of what’s happening in the world—“and even less interest in hearing the people who want to deliver it,” Michael Hayden, a retired four-star general and former director of both the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, told me. “He’s impatient, decision-oriented, and prone to action. It’s all about the present tense. When he asks, ‘What the hell’s going on in Iraq?’ people around him have learned not to say, ‘Well, in 632 . . . ’ ” (That was the year when the Prophet Muhammad died, prompting the beginning of the Sunni-Shiite split.*)
“He just doesn’t have an interest in the world,” Hayden said.
“The sheer scale of his lack of knowledge is what has astounded me—and I had low expectations to begin with,” David Gordon, the director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff under Condoleezza Rice, during the Bush Administration, told me.\
And a world in dramatic flux compounds the stakes. Hayden cited the meltdown in the world order that has prevailed since the Second World War; the changing nature of the state and its power; China’s growing military and economic power; and rogue nations seeking nuclear weapons, among others. “Yet the most disruptive force in the world today is the United States of America,” the former C.I.A. director said.
more at the link!
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THANK YOU, Susan. Trump is UNFIT in so many ways. His cheating at golf, a game, says it all.
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I thought this was made clear about Trump during his campaign. Ostensibly, those who voted for him did so knowing he had these (among other) severe limitations. This is the kind of man they wanted to lead the nation. Can we get responses from them?
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I had no trouble deducing that Trump was minimally informed during his months of campaigning; it feels surreal that many still “wonder” at his lack of focus and interest.
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From the NY Times
Tips for Leaders Meeting Trump: Keep It Short and Give Him a Win
“this is a guy with a limited attention span. He absolutely won’t want to listen to visitors droning on for a half-hour — or longer if they need an interpreter.”
From The Hill
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Foreign officials meeting President Trump during his first overseas trip are being told to praise him for winning the Electoral College last year, the New York Times reported Friday.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/334193-foreign-leaders-told-to-praise-trump-on-election-win-report
Everything has to be about him. He has to win all the time. For instance, if unemployment goes down, in his mind, he won. If unemployment goes up, it will be someone else’s fault.
Trump always wins even when he loses.
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Lloyd,
BINGO. Trump is a poor self-concept and hates himself, thus his actions. Plus, I really think his attention span is just NOT THERE. Trump is a walking CASE of CLUELESS.
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Here in Australia we’re still reeling from the transcript of the conversation between him and our PM, published in the Washington Post. If nothing else, it confirmed pretty much what we suspected about them both (AND about the phone call itself).
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David,
Are you familiar with The Treehorn Express site by Phil Cullen and Allan Alach? If not here is the link: https://treehornexpress.wordpress.com/
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I wasn’t – thanks, Duane!
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Phil and Allan have been kind enough to serialize my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education”. I believe that they are up to Chapter 5 already (boy time flies sometimes).
However, if you would like to read it all at one sitting feel free to email me at duaneswacker@gmail.com and I’ll send it to you. In it I discuss the purpose of American public education and of government in general, issues of truth in discourse, justice and ethics in teaching practices, the abuse and misuse of the terms standards and measurement which serve to provide an unwarranted pseudo-scientific validity/sheen to the standards and testing regime and how the inherent discrimination in that regime should be adjudicated to be unconstitutional state discrimination no different than discrimination via race, gender, disability, etc. . . .
Here’s what Phil had to say about the book:
“I must say that I was impressed by what you say and the down-to-earth way you say it. It’s a studied and thoughtful presentation. . . . I especially like the way you have arranged the presentation. Your work is impressive and I would be obliged if you kept in touch.”
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If you look at videos of his interviews from decades past (easily found on YouTube, such as. one with Tom Brokaw), the difference over time is jarring. He used to have an extensive vocabulary, the ability to sustain a topic of conversation, and skill in explaining his ideas in long, complex sentences. All of these abilities are clearly gone now, pointing to dementia of some type as the logical explanation.
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Is Trump Suffering from Dementia?
David Pakman Show
Published on Mar 30, 2017
–Donald Trump’s forgetfulness, and uses of filler words and non-specific nouns, correlate with the early signs of Alzheimer’s disease observed in Ronald Regan
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I regularly get emails giving the “Thought for the Day”. Today’s thought was right on target. How blessed are we to have a nut job at the top.
To argue with insanity is insane.
~Alan Cohen
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That’s a big LIKE on that quote!!
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He’s witless, he has Alzheimer’s, dementia, ADD, etc. And yet this guy was “smart” enough to beat all his opponents, who were many, D and R and some of whom had even more money and smarts than he did/does. Trump knew how to appeal to great masses of Americans who seem to think that he’s this wonderful man. I certainly underestimated him, I thought he was a joke and that he could never win given all his outrageous comments. I was wrong. Trump is still a joke but now he’s a joke in charge of a vast nuclear arsenal and the most powerful military on earth. Whoopee, what could possibly go wrong?
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There is a name for this talent with mobs: demagogue
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Demagogues tap into resentments and exploit them. I am unaware of any demagogues who actually express clear ideas with eloquence (they may exist; I’m sure those who have vitriolic hate of Barack Obama would use him as an example of one who does). In my opinion, the mobs are pre-programmed to find great oratory skills regardless of what is said. I have listened to speeches by Hitler and his elite minions. I was present at many of David Duke’s speeches when he was at his peak in the late 80s and early 90s. I have asked friends who understood Castro and Mussolini. I’ve listened to old speeches by Father Coughlin. And, for a short time tried to endure entire speeches by our Dear Leader. What they all have in common, in my view, is boring, disjointed, and illogical content. The mobs identify with their resentments; content is irrelevant. And they all claim that what they heard was inspiring or moving. With our Dear Leader, one can transcribe anything he says and it makes no sense whatsoever. But the mobs love it. They knew they would before the first word was uttered.
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This sounds about right:
dem·a·gogue
/ˈdeməˌɡäɡ/
noun
1.a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument.
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If it’s not about HIM, he is not interested.
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” Or is it that he is not interested in foreign policy? Maybe if they were discussing the Miss Universe pageant or golf, he could stay focused for more than two minutes.”
Yes.
No joke:
Yes.
I taught kids w ADHD for many years. I spoke with the school psychologists about their ability to stay engaged with video games for hours at a time as opposed to just minutes with academics (even those that were at their skill set levels). So why are they labeled ADHD?
The psychologist said “that’s the point”: if they’re interested, they will stay on task. If not, they won’t.
My bet is that Donald Trump has things other than Afghanistan on his mind.
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gitapik – I hope you have your own child with ADHD and maybe you would be able ot understand. Many times it’s called ADHD when in reality it is anxiety, or plainly the material is not being presented to them in a manner or level they will benefit from it and they disengage. But to imply that ADHD doesn’t exist versus these other reasons for a discrepancy, shows that you need some ConEd in understanding special needs of students.
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gitapik – as does your school psychologist it seems as well!
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Didn’t mean to offend, M. I obviously struck a nerve. My apologies.
I had a very good rate of success with my kids, M, prior to the Bloomberg takeover. All were labeled Emotionally Disturbed and most with ADHD. There were definitely varying degrees of severity.
I did find a definite common thread in their ability to focus for long periods of time on video games, which is why I brought it up with the psychologist. The answer sounds glib and oversimplified, but that’s what it was.
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The nerve is that schools prefer to blame the students versus their struggles that are way too often ignored or worked around instead of resolved.
Plus ADHD is usually comrobid with so many other LD’s and disabilities.
But it is so easy for schools to use as an excuse to push the problem and blame back onto the child.
I’ve seen it way too often.
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No argument on that one, M. The system is a large one and there aren’t many shades of gray being accounted for, in terms of placement.
Then we get into the area of the individual child who has been correctly placed. What, exactly, do they need in order to experience success and accomplishment. We’re just now going back to teaching functional skills to the ones with autism.
I started teaching when the first wave of crack babies (sorry…but that was the term) hit school age. We had many, many workshops on different and innovative means of reaching these kids. With experience, we became pretty good at it. All of that was thrown to the wayside when Bloomberg and Klein took the helm and decreed the need for meeting the standards (in standardized form, city wide), regardless of functional level.
The pendulum seems to be swinging back, now. Our last Chancellor’s Day had quite a bit of time devoted to the concept of transition, starting at an early age. Teaching more practical skills so that the student can become independent by the age of 21.
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And I don’t think you’d be telling me I need some “ConEd in understanding special needs of students” if you knew me and had seen me work. You might not agree with what I said in this post, but you don’t know me.
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gitapik – I’m going solely on what you said in your post. And yes, it did sound glib and uniformed. Sorry!
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Regarding attention span related to video games: One theory I hold is that it has to do with stimulation. Physical (the movement of the hand held control), emotional (success in achieving objectives), and cerebral (the kids do understand the rules and what must be done to achieve those objectives).
You won’t find those things in the standard, scripted out lesson and unit plans being dished out in so many of the public schools, now. Creativity like that requires thinking outside of the box and finding what, in a practical sense, motivates the kid(s). Then developing lessons that incorporates those motivational forces.
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Interesting read. Nothing new, but useful compilation:
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/17/outline-trumps-achievements-first-six-months-office
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Pretty much ! However the obsessing about Russia has derailed temporarily Republican legislative agenda, we can thank Trump for saving Obamacare,lets hope he does as well on tax reform and privatization of infrastructure. Keep him tweeting till next spring.
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What a sad state of affairs, but yes: keep the idiocy rolling and maybe we can dodge a bullet or two in the interim.
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Unfortunately, Mr. Trump has devised a means of expanding his base supporter’s attention spans:
https://youtu.be/oNdVEWPnw7A
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REAL NEWS? I just listened to the video.
Think I’ll throw up. I can’t take all the wonderful things our fantastic, honest (no lies), ‘best leader ever’ has achieved. I can see why his ignorant base believes this crap. Say anything often enough and it becomes a fact.
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