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.