“I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

—  Philip Roth

As quoted in "Roth on Trump" by Judith Thurman, in The New Yorker (30 January 2017), p. 17

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Philip Roth 95
American novelist 1933–2018

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