Make America Great Again. Four words. Each word is pretty simple, although “America” is three syllables! A new study done by Carnegie Mellon found that the Donald’s speeches were the lowest among a field of simpletons when it comes to grammatical sophistication. According to their analysis, when it comes to grammar:
We see that George W. Bush had the lowest level and Abraham Lincoln the highest. Amongst the candidates, levels are between sixth and seventh grades except for Donald Trump.
[...]
Candidates give speeches to differing types of audiences over time, ranging from small gatherings with a specific issue in mind to larger general ones. The one speech made by every one of the candidates was the announcement of candidacy. Figure 6 shows the lexical level of these speeches and Figure 7 shows the grammar level. We note that lexical levels are comparable for most candidates with Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton having the lowest levels, at grade 8. For grammar, we see that the level for Donald Trump is significantly lower, at grade 5.
[my emphasis]
Now, in the Trump’s defense, he’s just trying to incite anger and hate, and when you are swinging so far below the belt you need to make a few concessions to the English language—it’s hard to think when you’re grunting and squatting, trying to yell into the dark abyss of the frightened child that is America’s psyche. When looking at how Donald Trump’s grammar has “evolved” over this campaign, it is fun to note that Trump found his inner Raymond Carver for a singular moment: his concession speech in Iowa.
There is also an interesting peak for grammar for Donald Trump in his Iowa concession speech and a considerably lower level of both lexicon and grammar for Trump for his Nevada victory speech (while the same is not seen for his Super Tuesday victory speech).