The campaign, Stephens told his audience, saw the rise of a pundit class he called the “TrumpXplainers,” who would offer to translate the candidate’s incoherent word salads into something that sounded cogent. “For instance, Trump would give a speech or offer an answer in a debate that amounted to little more than a word jumble,” Stephens said. “But rather than quote Trump, or point out that what he had said was grammatically and logically nonsensical, the TrumpXplainers would tell us what he had allegedly meant to say. They became our political semioticians, ascribing pattern and meaning to
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