Michael Knowles

And the way that Trump speaks

is as a New Yorker, someone posted last night on social media said, maybe it's just, you gotta be from New York to know what he, and I'll tell you what, it helps.

For years now, when President Trump uses quotation marks to mean boldface,

So, you know, he'll do that and say, like, we're going to destroy you or whatever.

But he really, a lot of people don't understand that.

My grandmother used to write like that.

New Yorkers of a certain age write like that.

They think the quotations mean a joke.

They mean mockery.

They mean verbal irony.

But actually, sometimes New Yorkers use it.

So it's true.

New Yorkers speak in a different way.

Maybe that helps.

But the other thing that we know about Trump is that he uses hyperbole for rhetorical purpose.

In fact, he tells you that he does that in the book that he wrote about how he makes deals.

The very famous, best-selling book, decades-old book, he says, yeah, I use hyperbole for rhetorical purpose.

The passage about his use of hyperbole is actually worth reading.

But you can trust what he says when you know what he means.

I did that whole exegesis, as it were, of the Trump tweet about open the effing straits, you crazy bastards, or we're going to rain down hell on your civilization.