What did Donald Trump really say during his Person-of-the-Year interview with Time magazine? We will never know, because Time has published only edited excerpts of that interview. At the end of the \u201ctranscript,\u201d Time includes this disclaimer: \u201cThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I strongly suspect that the disclaimer is an understatement. If the verbatim transcript of Trump\u2019s earlier interview with the New York Times is an indicator,<\/a> Time\u2019s editors must have done a lot<\/u> of editing, condensing and clarifying. The New York Times transcript included many shocking passages that were rambling and incoherent. With that as a yardstick, it\u2019s hard to imagine\u2014as Time magazine\u2019s edited transcript would have us believe\u2014that Trump was as cogent and paragraph-based as he seems in the Time magazine interview.<\/p>\n

I will acknowledge that Time\u2019s edited excerpts still manage to reveal a wandering thought process, a tendency to brag, and Trump\u2019s trademark narcissism. Here\u2019s an example:<\/p>\n

HOW TRUMP WILL MEASURE SUCCESS<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we\u2019re going to have a lot of jobs brought back. I think we\u2019re going to have a lot fewer companies leaving our country. I believe we will be successful with defeating ISIS or bringing them down to a level where it\u2019s almost the same thing. And I hope I\u2019m judged from the time of the election, as opposed to from January 20th, because the stock market has had a tremendous bounce. And people are seeing very good things for business in this country. So I think we\u2019re going to have a lot of victories.<\/p>\n

HOW TRUMP CONNECTS WITH AMERICANS<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sitting in an apartment the likes of which nobody\u2019s ever seen. And yet I represent the workers of the world. And they love me and I love them. But when I was in Brooklyn I worked for my father on construction sites where he built houses or what he built, a building in Brooklyn. And I got to understand the construction workers and the police. These are great people. These are the people that built the country.<\/p>\n

Others try to hide their wealth. I mean I could tell you other candidates that have money, they\u2019ll go around and they\u2019ll get into a bad car just before they get to a rally. I don\u2019t believe in that. I don\u2019t believe in that. Because I think aspiration\u2019s a very important word. I think people aspire to do things. And they aspire to watch people. I don\u2019t think they want to see the president carrying his luggage out of Air Force One. And that\u2019s pretty much the way it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Having read the word-for-word transcript of the New York Times interview, and comparing it to the more succinct portrayal we get here from Time Magazine, I don\u2019t believe that Trump\u2019s speaking style could have changed this much in the past two weeks. For example, I really doubt that Trump\u2019s answer to a question about prescription drug prices was this brief:<\/p>\n

DRUG COMPANIES<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to bring down drug prices. I don\u2019t like what\u2019s happened with drug prices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, I would very much like to see the un-condensed, unedited and unclear parts that Time\u2019s editors left out. I know that it\u2019s standard journalistic practice to use only the most quotable parts of interviews in the body of their reports. But a transcript should be a transcript–especially when it’s documenting a person known to be as temperamentally unfit and as unqualified for the job as is Donald Trump. As Trump assumes the most powerful office in the world, bringing with him a very vague and unfocused way of approaching issues, it seems important to avoid cleaning up his language and syntax\u2014making him sound more reasoned than he is–and instead to pull back the curtain, so we can see what we really have.<\/p>\n

Fair use prevents me from copying and pasting the entire, condensed transcript as published in Time. But you can read it here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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