Sussing out Trump’s mnd via grammar
Trump said, “Frederick Douglas is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job that is being recognized more and more.”
If he had worded it as “DID an amazing job”, we would simply have remarked on Trump’s “talking” rather than “speaking”. John McWhorter wrote a good piece on how Trump talks rather than speaks, the latter being typical of Presidents, whose every word is parsed by the world.
But in using the present perfect tense instead of the simple past, Trump sounded as if Douglas is a contemporary of ours. The present perfect is used when the action happened in the past but “doing the job” continues into the present time. If he had said, “The job [work] of F.D. has had a great effect…..”, that would have worked. But Trump talks, except to the Prime Minister of Australia………. or anyone else who fails to praise him sufficiently or dares disagree with him.
McWhorter’s article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/opinion/sunday/how-to-listen-to-donald-trump-every-day-for-years.html?_r=0
Thanks to Carol Ross Stacy for the link.