Politics

Donald Trump speaks like a fourth-grader

Donald Trump connects with voters by using simple, commanding language that even a fourth-grader could understand, a report says — and the style has been so successful that his competitors are copying it.

“To his supporters, Trump’s style is refreshingly direct,” Wired magazine’s Chelsea Coe writes, noting that a commonly used formula for assessing reading skills shows the GOP front-runner consistently speaking at a fourth-grade level.

“From a linguistic point of view, it turns out, part of the trick is not to assume a high level of literacy.”

The same Wired analysis shows the language of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio decreasing in reading level as the debates wore on.

Cruz’s language gradually decreased in complexity, starting out at almost 10th grade for the first two debates, in August and September, then falling to just above eighth grade by February and early this month.

Rubio began debating on an eighth-grade level, but dropped at the ninth debate, on Feb. 13, the first time he went on the attack against Trump.

By the 11th debate, on March 3, Rubio was at just above sixth-grade level.

John Kasich has hovered between a sixth- and seventh-grade level, the analysis showed.

Check out the time Trump used some very adult language: