Pam Peirce

     Here is another example of seeking an emotional response from voters rather than an educated one. Trump gets his followers laugh at people who "know things"—educated people. In his speech to congress, he spoke of canceling a grant that was meant to aid the nation of Lesotho. He added, intending for people to laugh, that nobody has ever heard of Lesotho. Well, I have. It is a mountainous nation completely surrounded by South Africa. Wikipedia says it has a population of 2 million people that are 99.7% of one tribal group, the Basotho. It has 2 official languages, that of the tribal people and English.
 
     The nation of Lesotho was not amused. Representatives of the nation have complained loudly, wanting the world to know that they are a member of the United Nations, with a permanent U.S. diplomatic mission and a previously positive relationship with the U.S. They are not a rich nation, and the sudden end of U.S. aid will be extremely disruptive to their efforts to combat HIV AIDS. They had been depending on U.S. aid to help them fight that scourge, though they say they recognize the right of the U.S. to discontinue its aid. (They have the second highest rate of HIV AIDS of any nation, and women are a high proportion of the infected.)
 
     The current president often throws out such comments in his speeches. I generally take them to mean that he, himself, had never heard of whatever he says others have not heard of. (Whether he actually has not heard of what he claims he has not is moot, but I think is quite possible that he has not heard of it, or if he once learned it, maybe in a school class,  he has quite forgotten it.)
 
     The political reason he says "nobody even knows what that means," or "nobody knows this" is to signal that  "I am one of you. I am also poorly educated."   He can get away with this at his rallies. In fact, at one Las Vegas rally, in 2016, he said, "I love the poorly educated." But with a national (and international) audience, such nonsense plays less well.