This content originally appeared on daverupert.com and was authored by daverupert.com
We all know the current US President is one hell of an orator and often assures us that he has “the best words”:
I went to an Ivy League school. I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words.
The man knows words. Says so right there. While some might view his non-sequitur ramblings as the nascent stages of dementia or an unfiltered ADHD brain launching into successive short (at times racist) bullet-point diatribes based on the last word or phrase he said like a cursed game of word association, the President asserts this is not the case:
You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like – and friends of mine that are, like, English professors – they say, it’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.
“The Weave” re-entered my consciousness this week after I watched a quick snippet of an Oval Office event where Trump says the (“radical left-wing”) CBO projects tariffs will reduce the deficit by $4 trillion USD. I was skeptical –and for good reason– but I tuned in. What shocked me was not the complete lack of specifics about the CBO projection, but rather the actual reason for the Oval Office meeting: a FIFA event? Wow.
For awhile now, I’ve clued into the cyclical pattern of his speeches, little snippets of “the best words” and talking points assembled like a ransom note cut from a magazine. I often wondered if it’s possible to diagram “the weave”. The “branching” narratives Trump uses made me think a git-graph-style visualization was apropos. So I grabbed a transcript and got to work.
For my first attempt, I used Mermaid.js’ GitGraph Diagram which worked well but only supports horizontal charts. As I sat with it I realized I wanted a chronological list of statements that read like a transcript. I repurposed the Mermaid’s GitGraph DSL and made a web component called <git-graph> to help me visualize and document Trump’s derailing trains of thought from the above event.
branch tarrifs
checkout tarrifs
commit id: "I was very happy that today, as you saw, the uh group that does this [the CBO], a government group,"
branch radical-left
checkout radical-left
commit id: "a radical left group, announced that Trump was right"
checkout tarrifs
merge radical-left
commit id: "took in $4 trillion worth of tariffs"
commit id: "The $4 trillion they're going to reduce the deficit by numbers far greater than they ever expected or heard of."
branch stock-market
checkout stock-market
commit id: "And by the way, the stock market went up a thousand points. That was as of 10 minutes ago."
commit id: "I can't tell you what happened. A lot of things happened, but the stock market's up almost a thousand points."
cherry-pick id: "I was very happy that today, as you saw, the uh group that does this [the CBO], a government group,"
commit id: "It's basically on the news that uh the release that just came out from government that uh the tariffs that everybody was talking about that"
branch world-respect
checkout world-respect
commit id: "the whole world respects us for because of what we did"
cherry-pick id: "took in $4 trillion worth of tariffs"
commit id: "The tariffs are going to be at $4 trillion."
cherry-pick id: "The $4 trillion they're going to reduce the deficit by numbers far greater than they ever expected or heard of."
commit id: "They're going to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion."
branch ask-jd
checkout ask-jd
commit id: "[Seeks validation from JD Vance]"
checkout stock-market
merge ask-jd
cherry-pick id: "And by the way, the stock market went up a thousand points. That was as of 10 minutes ago."
commit id: "It's had a huge impact and the stock market is way up."
commit id: "But this will drive more than $30 billion in US economy"
commit id: "and create 185,000 American jobs."
branch fifa-event
checkout fifa-event
commit id: "No sporting event attracts more attention or more fans or anything else"
commmit id: "And I just look forward to the draw."
commit id: "So we're going to have the draw essentially, Gianni, at the Kennedy Center"
branch kennedy-center-remodel
checkout kennedy-center-remodel
commit id: "and by that time it'll be in even better shape. We're working on it."
commit id: "It's about a year project to make it."
commit id: "It'll be great. It'll be fantastic."
branch oval-office-remodel
checkout oval-office-remodel
commit id: "You see the way [the oval office] is looking?"
commit id: "Looks nice."
commit id: "I can't tell you how much that gold costs, a lot of money."
commit id: "There's nothing like gold and there's nothing like solid gold."
commit id: "But this beautiful office needed it."
commit id: "It had to be representative when we took it over."
commit id: "It was dirty, not clean."
commit id: "I immediately changed the chair and had the this beautiful desk renovated, brought out by the White House."
commit id: "People that do this, they did a great job."
commit id: "They sent it out. We have a craftsman who's great."
commit id: "But this was not appropriate for the Oval Office when I took over."
commit id: "And now you look at all those paintings [instructs to look at paintings]"
branch painting-vault
checkout painting-vault
commit id: "All of these are great presidents and they were all in the vaults."
commit id: "They were in vaults for in some cases much more than a hundred years."
commit id: "And now they're proudly hanging on the oval office walls and I can't imagine anybody changing it."
commit id: "But they were they were buried in vaults for over a hundred years, many of them."
checkout oval-office-remodel
merge painting-vault
commit id: "So it's very exciting. People come in, they really love it."
branch self-congratulations
checkout self-congratulations
commit id: "They love what we're doing here."
commit id: "They love what we're doing in DC [deploying the national guard against American citizens]"
commit id: "and they love what we're doing most importantly in the country in the world. [citation needed]"
checkout fifa-event
merge self-congratulations
commit id: "I'd like to ask Gianni to say a few words ... [flattery] ... he's got the biggest event in the world coming right here to the United States."
commit id: "We did a little for Canada,"
commit id: "we did a little for Mexico."
checkout self-congratulations
merge fifa-event
commit id: "We thought, see, I'm a good citizen. I said, let them have a little piece."
cherry-pick id: "We did a little for Canada,"
commit id: "So, we gave a little to Canada."
commit id: "See how nice I am."
cherry-pick id: "we did a little for Mexico."
commit id: "And we gave a little bit to Mexico."
checkout fifa-event
merge self-congratulations
commit id: "Gianni, please say a few words."
By my count in that four-minute address there were ten distinct themes or “branches”, most of which are common grievances or rhetorical themes found in nearly all Trump speeches. I used “cherry-picking” to model callbacks to a previous statement (e.g. “the stock market is up”) that seem to reverberate into later trains of thought, a quintessential feature of the weave.
Four minutes of the weave was about all I could handle but I think this visualization models what I experience when trying to follow along to the President’s speeches. One or two phrases on a topic, then jumping to a new topic, weaving in a (sometimes unrelated) point from a previous topic to make the thought appear more cohesive and linear, then driving deep down an inconsequential topic. When he talks so long about ten different topics at a time, I’d forgive you for thinking he said something salient. But when you break it down you see it for what it is: a mishmash of talking points.
This content originally appeared on daverupert.com and was authored by daverupert.com