by Alexander O. Onukwue

Normally, interviews are supposed to flow, without looking rehearsed or overly formal in conversation. When you are having a chat with a high ranking official, especially in Government, you expect them to maybe hold back a bit or be a bit rounded in the things they say and in how they say them.

That is the norm – but there is Donald Trump.

The edited transcripts of his interview with the New York Times are not one of the best things you will read this year, and this is not speaking about the profundity or morality of the thoughts discussed. Written excerpts are supposed to help put to words the things recorded on tape during an interview but it does appear the editors at The Times gave it their best shot but could not help the eventual account that looks like sparse chatter from thousands of feet in unfavorable winds.

Trump cut(s) bits and joins pieces, swerving many times between incoherence and garbling. With patience, you’d make out the meaning of his words, but you would need discipline to go the full length of the entire thing.

President Trump is no Obama; the former President did not – and possibly still does not – have an equal in the world public speaking during his time in the Oval Office, so it is not necessary to compare both. Obama is more ‘professorial’ if you like, and takes his time to mentally formulate and analyse, before articulating his thoughts.

Trump has done well with reading off Teleprompters; reading speeches off of screens with scrolling text should not be a problem for anyone really. But his inability to have a conversation that can be put down as a readable conversation is an obvious weakness.

It is that kind of scenario every secretary whose duty it is to write minutes would loathe to have. Communication is not just about speaking but being able to be understood. Perhaps that is the reason why Trump would repeatedly say he has been lied against by the media, whereas it is he who was not able to lay down his thoughts in a form that can be writeable and re-writeable.

Public speaking practitioners understand that the act of speaking by one person involves a simultaneous mental act of taking notes by another. Unless the words are said in a distinct and coherent manner, the cognitive ability to retain and distill will not have been helped.

Moral of the story: speak as you would want to be read. It is most applicable for public speaking, but if you will be on record and your words potentially transmitted to text, even semi-public conversations like interviews become a chance to sound like an author.

Editor