'The president doesn't read': Why Trump’s illiteracy is a 'disaster' for Americans

As the war on Iran inflicts harm around the globe and the domestic political situation continues to spiral, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie asserts that President Donald Trump’s illiteracy has played no small part in creating a “disaster.”

“He doesn’t really read,” said Bouie, pointing out the widely reported fact that during his first term, Trump rarely managed to read and receive his daily presidential briefings. At the time, his aides even began to “trick” him into reading them by including lots of pictures and peppering documents with his name.

This situation has only worsened since then.

“Trump has obviously deteriorated cognitively since his first term,” says Bouie. “And it’s clear that Trump today is even more reluctant to read anything that requires the expenditure of mental energy.”

As evidence of this, Bouie points to reporting earlier this week indicating that rather than a detailed report on the situation in Iran, the president is being shown 2-minute montages “all about American success. They’re not really about the larger strategic picture.” To make matters worse, “he had to ask his own generals and officials about whether videos and things he sees online are AI or not.”

This has been an issue throughout Trump’s second term, with it being reported last year that his advisors were struggling to get him to pay attention to briefings. There has been a “significant drop” in his engagement compared to his first term.

Bouie suggests that this behavior portends three key things.

First, "he gets truncated briefings” that are likely lacking details and context. “To a certain extent, Trump is flying blind.”

Furthermore, it’s clear that “he also has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality — real things from generated things.” Bouie suspects that Trump’s aides feed him a steady diet of AI-slop that is divorced from reality, showing the president a fabricated reality that will appeal to him rather than factual media that would clarify the many crises that have emerged.

According to Bouie, this also suggests that “Trump as a political force is closer to spent than most people realize.” His approval ratings have plunged. He’s frustrated and checked out with domestic policy, delegating most decision-making to his Cabinet officials while he himself focuses on his handful of obsessions.

And what all of this implies — from the president’s unwillingness or inability to look at the big picture, to his aides entertaining him with Iran war highlight reels — is that “the one thing that Trump does seem to love, that seems to bring him joy, is his ability to inflict death and suffering on others.”

“He really does relish the violent arm of the presidency,” says Bouie. “The ability of the president to deploy lethal force — that gives him meaning. That makes everything else worth it.”

Bouie concludes with a dismal assessment.

“The arsenal of the United States and the government of the United States,” he warns, “is in the hands of someone profoundly psychologically ill-equipped to be in that position of power.”

While Trump receives his daily montages showing only American successes in Iran, the rest of the world is well aware that whatever he’s seeing doesn’t reflect reality.

“At this stage, the war in Iran looks like nothing less than an unmitigated disaster for the United States,” says Bouie. “An easily predictable disaster, but a disaster nonetheless.”

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