# Post x_1105468569800839200

- Post ID: `x_1105468569800839200`
- Platform: X (Twitter)
- Posted: 2019-03-12T18:00:20.000Z (UTC)
- Deleted: no
- Repost: no
- Canonical URL: https://trump.fm/post/x_1105468569800839200
- Analysis page: https://trump.fm/post/x_1105468569800839200/analysis
- Audio narration: https://static.trump.fm/audio/x_1105468569800839200.mp3 (a synthesized voice reading the post text, not a recording)

## Post text

> Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are....

## Engagement

- Likes: 0
- Reposts: 20,492
- Replies: 0
- Views: unknown
- Metrics collected: 2026-02-01T01:33:25.069Z (UTC)

# Analysis

_Machine-generated by trump.fm on 2026-03-17T03:06:29.800Z (UTC): a model's reading of this post, not his words. Its psychological terms describe the language, not a clinical assessment of him._

## Summary

This post instruments a mass-casualty aviation disaster (Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX, 157 dead, two days prior) as confirmation of a pre-existing anti-expertise schema. The complete absence of victim acknowledgment is clinically notable — consistent with the low-empathy pattern in narcissistic configurations. The rhetorical engine is a class-coded anti-intellectualism: "computer scientists from MIT" encodes elite, coastal, credential-worshipping impracticality in five words, positioning Trump as the common-sense observer these specialists cannot be.

The post's diagnosis is analytically inverted: the 737 MAX MCAS failures were caused specifically by Boeing hiding new software complexity FROM pilots to avoid retraining costs — the antithesis of "too complex to fly." This inversion is consistent with rationalization defense: a complex organizational failure is flattened to confirm a prior worldview rather than understood on its own terms.

Authorship fingerprints (truncated mid-sentence, stream-of-consciousness cross-domain pivot, self-referential personal testimony) suggest authentic Trump composition despite business-hours timing. Narcissistic state is grandiose — supply-seeking through claimed prescience, not reactive injury. No rage, no targeting, no danger indicators. Complexity slightly below baseline, consistent with casual Twitter mode rather than rally-speech register. The post is broadly representative of Trump's stable anti-expertise populist schema rather than a marked deviation from pattern.

## Post Analysis: March 12, 2019 — Aviation Complexity Tweet

### Context
This post appears to be Trump's public response to the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 disaster (Boeing 737 MAX 8, March 10, 2019), which had by this date triggered China's grounding of the entire MAX fleet and intense global scrutiny. The post is notably cut off mid-sentence ("Split second decisions are...."), almost certainly hitting Twitter's 280-character limit and suggesting this was either the first tweet in an intended thread or an impulsively truncated thought.

---

### Level 1 — Dispositional Traits (Big Five)
**Extraversion (high, ~0.72):** Assertive, opinionated, presents himself as pattern-recognizing authority. "I see it all the time in many products" — unsolicited personal commentary on a rapidly unfolding tragedy.

**Agreeableness (low, ~0.18):** No empathy for the 157 victims of the crash is expressed anywhere in the post. No condolences, no acknowledgment of human loss. The post treats a mass-casualty event as a launch pad for a worldview sermon.

**Openness (low, ~0.28):** The post explicitly valorizes simplicity over innovation: "old and simpler is far better." This represents closed, anti-progress ideation rather than curious engagement with complexity.

**Conscientiousness (moderate-low, ~0.38):** The incomplete trailing sentence and impulsive pivot from aviation disaster to product design critique suggest low deliberation.

**Neuroticism (moderate, ~0.48):** Underlying anxious energy in the framing — the post has an agitated quality, though it masks as confident authority.

---

### Level 2 — Characteristic Adaptations

**Agency motive (dominant, ~0.72):** The central move is claiming superior cross-domain pattern recognition: "I see it all the time in many products." This is an assertion of wisdom-through-experience that positions the speaker above technical experts. The motive is status-assertion and epistemic dominance.

**Communion motive (low, ~0.25):** Absent. The post expresses no solidarity with victims, families, pilots, or Boeing employees. Any apparent identification with "pilots" is instrumental — they function as the plain-folk foil to the "MIT computer scientists."

**Schemas:**
- *Self:* Wide-ranging, practical sage who transcends specialist tunnel vision
- *Others (positive):* Pilots, practical workers, common-sense people
- *Others (negative):* Technological elitists, engineers, "MIT computer scientists" — implicitly the same class as the regulatory and academic establishment he opposes
- *World:* Being made unnecessarily complex by self-important experts at the expense of simple, effective solutions

---

### Level 3 — Narrative Identity

**Protagonist role:** Wise observer / truth-teller. The speaker positions himself not as a grieving observer of tragedy but as someone who *already knew* the systemic problem others are only now discovering.

**Narrative sequence:** *Contamination.* A once-functional, simple, reliable world ("old and simpler is far better") has been degraded by unnecessary complexity. This is a grief-tinged conservatism — the past was better, the present is corrupt.

**Identity claims:** "I have cross-domain pattern recognition that specialists lack." "I am the one who notices what others overlook."

**Contrasting other:** "Computer scientists from MIT" — a tight encoding of coastal elite, credential-worshipping, impractical expertise. The choice of "MIT" specifically, rather than just "engineers" or "software developers," is precise: it invokes the most prestigious American technical institution as shorthand for out-of-touch expert class. Notably, this tweet arrives the same week the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal broke, making elite university admissions culturally salient.

---

### Level 4 — Clinical Indicators

#### Malignant Narcissism Assessment

**A. Narcissistic Features (moderate, ~0.52):**
- Grandiosity through claimed expertise: "I see it all the time in many products" — a sweeping claim to universal product-design wisdom with zero evidentiary basis
- No empathy for crash victims
- Entitlement to pronounce on aviation safety while 157 people's bodies were still at the crash site

**B. Antisocial Features (low-moderate, ~0.28):**
- Disregard for normative expectations (condolences before editorializing on a fresh mass-casualty event)
- No remorse or self-monitoring about the appropriateness of the timing

**C. Paranoid Features (low, ~0.22):**
- Minimal in this specific post; the "MIT computer scientists" framing contains a low-grade conspiratorial implication that expertise serves self-interest rather than safety, but this doesn't rise to frank paranoid ideation here

**D. Ego-Syntonic Sadism (minimal, ~0.10):**
- Not present in a direct form, though the complete absence of condolences while 157 people are dead represents a form of affective indifference

#### Narcissistic State: Grandiose
The post is in expansive, prescriptive mode — not wounded. There is no visible narcissistic injury trigger in this post (Manafort's lighter-than-expected sentence that same day may have been psychologically stabilizing).

#### Trigger Assessment: Maintenance / Preemptive Supply-Seeking
The aviation disaster provides an opportunity for Trump to position himself as prescient, not a wound he is reacting to. This is supply-seeking through claimed foresight.

#### Narcissistic Rage: Absent
No rage in this post. Tone is confident and declarative.

---

### Defense Mechanisms

**Splitting (immature):** Simple/old = unambiguously good. Complex/new = unambiguously bad. No acknowledgment that modern aviation is exponentially safer than the "simpler" era it replaced.

**Rationalization (neurotic):** A mass-casualty disaster becomes supporting evidence for a pre-existing anti-expertise worldview. The causal chain is inverted: the 737 MAX MCAS failures were caused not by pilot replacement but by Boeing *hiding* the new software system from pilots to avoid FAA retraining requirements. The fix would have been more transparency with pilots, not simpler planes — yet the rationalization produces the opposite lesson.

**Projection (immature, mild):** The accusation of "always seeking to go one unnecessary step further" describes a specific organizational failure at Boeing (MCAS was added to mask aerodynamic issues that would have required retraining costs), but is projected onto a generic technological class ("computer scientists").

---

### Cognitive Status Markers

**Baseline comparison:** Relative to baseline Trump speech patterns (mid-2000s media appearances, early tweets), this post shows:
- Below-baseline syntactic complexity
- Simple, declarative sentence structures throughout
- The truncated "Split second decisions are...." is most likely a 280-character cutoff rather than a cognitive failure, but it does result in an incomplete argument
- No word-finding difficulty or paraphasia visible
- Coherent internal logic, even if analytically flawed

**Complexity score: ~0.42** (slightly below baseline — simplified framing, absence of subordinate clausal structures typical of longer Trump soliloquies)

**Baseline deviation: Slight** — post is consistent with Trump's more casual, impulsive Twitter style rather than rally-speech baseline.

---

### Authorship Attribution

**Assessment: Authentic Trump (confidence: medium-high)**

*Timing:* 18:00:20 UTC = 13:00 EST (1 PM Eastern). Trump was in Washington DC on March 12, 2019 (budget release week, Manafort sentencing day). This is business hours, which is a mild indicator of aide authorship.

*But style evidence strongly favors authentic Trump:*
- "I see it all the time in many products" — self-referential, unsolicited personal testimony
- The incomplete trailing sentence ("Split second decisions are....") is a signature authentic-Trump artifact — hitting the character limit mid-thought suggests spontaneous rather than drafted composition
- Stream-of-consciousness pivot from aviation to "many products"
- "MIT computer scientists" is an emotional, class-coded choice, not a polished communications phrase
- No event announcement, schedule, or external link — purely editorial

**Authorship score: 0.78** (likely authentic Trump)

---

### Rhetorical & Propaganda Techniques

- **Appeal to tradition/nostalgia:** "old and simpler is far better" — conservative idealization of the past as the standard for present judgment
- **Ad hominem of credential class:** "computer scientists from MIT" — attacks the educational background rather than the engineering decisions
- **False dichotomy:** Pilots vs. computer scientists; old/simple vs. complex/dangerous — no middle ground acknowledged
- **Unsolicited personal authority:** "I see it all the time in many products" — claim to omnidisciplinary expertise as rhetorical anchor
- **Hyperbole:** "far too complex," "Pilots are no longer needed"
- **Implicature through truncation:** "Split second decisions are...." — the ellipsis implies a dark completion the reader fills in (pilots can't react fast enough when computers fail) while allowing plausible ambiguity
- **Anti-intellectualism as populism:** The "MIT computer scientists" framing encodes a broader appeal — these elites are ruining things that worked, and common-sense people like Trump (and the audience) can see it

**Dehumanizing language:** Absent
**Violent imagery:** Absent
**Stochastic terrorism:** Absent

---

### Gaslighting & Reality Distortion

**Gaslighting: Not present.** This is opinion commentary rather than reality manipulation.

**Reality distortions:**
- "Pilots are no longer needed" — gross overstatement; commercial aviation in 2019 still required two pilots by regulation and practice
- The implicit causal claim (complexity caused the crash) is a partial inversion: Boeing's MCAS failures were caused by *hiding* software complexity from pilots, not by complexity per se. Transparency and regulation — not simplicity — were the missing elements.
- "old and simpler is far better" applied to aviation ignores that the "simpler" era of commercial aviation had dramatically higher fatal accident rates per passenger mile

---

### Fact Verification

| Claim | Verdict | Evidence |
|-------|---------|----------|
| "Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT" | **Mostly False** | Commercial aviation in 2019 still legally required two licensed pilots. The Boeing 737 MAX specifically required a crew of two. Automation assists but does not replace pilots. The 'computer scientist' framing mischaracterizes how Boeing's engineering decisions were made. |
| "Complexity (implied: from engineers/computer scientists) caused the 737 MAX crashes" | **Half True** | The MCAS software system was a proximate cause, but the failure mechanism was Boeing actively hiding MCAS from pilots and regulators to avoid triggering retraining requirements — the opposite of Trump's framing. Pilots were not given information about the system they were expected to override. |
| "Old and simpler is far better (for aviation)" | **Mostly False** | Fatal accident rates in commercial aviation have declined continuously as aircraft became more complex. The pre-automation era of 'simpler' aircraft had dramatically higher fatality rates per passenger mile. |

Overall Veracity: 30%

## Authorship Analysis

**Self-Written** (score: 78%)

### Indicators

- Incomplete trailing sentence ('Split second decisions are....') consistent with hitting 280-char limit mid-thought
- Stream-of-consciousness pivot from aviation to 'many products'
- Self-referential personal testimony ('I see it all the time')
- Emotionally coded class reference ('MIT computer scientists') rather than polished communications language
- No external link, schedule, or event announcement — purely editorial

## Psychological Profile

### State

**Grandiose State**

**Trigger:** Supply Seeking (Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash (March 10, 2019))

Sentiment: -0.38

Baseline Deviation: slight

### Clinical

**Malignant Narcissism:**
- Narcissistic: 52%
- Antisocial: 28%
- Paranoid: 22%
- Sadism: 10%

**Defense Mechanisms:**
- splitting (immature)
- rationalization (neurotic)
- projection (immature)

**Cognitive Complexity:**
- Complexity: 42%

**Parasocial Techniques:**
- Claimed universal cross-domain expertise ('I see it all the time in many products')
- Positioning as the one who already knew — prescient observer narrative
- Class-coded language ('MIT computer scientists') inviting audience identification with practical workers

## Fact Checks (3)

_The model's verdicts from 2026-03-17._

> Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT

**MOSTLY FALSE**

Commercial aviation in 2019 still legally required two licensed pilots. The Boeing 737 MAX specifically required a crew of two. Automation assists but does not replace pilots. The 'computer scientist' framing mischaracterizes how Boeing's engineering decisions were made.

Sources: FAA Part 121 regulations; Boeing 737 MAX certification documentation

> Complexity (implied: from engineers/computer scientists) caused the 737 MAX crashes

**HALF TRUE**

The MCAS software system was a proximate cause, but the failure mechanism was Boeing actively hiding MCAS from pilots and regulators to avoid triggering retraining requirements — the opposite of Trump's framing. Pilots were not given information about the system they were expected to override.

Sources: NTSB/FAA 737 MAX investigation findings; Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 preliminary report

> Old and simpler is far better (for aviation)

**MOSTLY FALSE**

Fatal accident rates in commercial aviation have declined continuously as aircraft became more complex. The pre-automation era of 'simpler' aircraft had dramatically higher fatality rates per passenger mile.

Sources: IATA Safety Report; NTSB historical accident statistics

Overall Veracity: 30%

## Tags

- anti-intellectualism (85%)
- populism (80%)
- aviation (90%)
- Boeing 737 MAX (88%)
- supply-seeking (72%)
- grandiose (68%)
- nostalgia (75%)
- credential-class-hostility (82%)
- empathy-absent (70%)
- rationalization (65%)

## That day

_From trump.fm's machine-generated digest of the day, not his words._

**A Quiet Day of Grandiose Expertise-Bashing, From Climate to Cockpits**

Trump had a light, unhurried day on social media — just four posts across a two-hour midday window. He bounced between three topics: accusing Democrats of antisemitism using a proxy quote, amplifying climate change denial from Fox & Friends, and weighing in on the Boeing 737 MAX crashes with a confident claim that airplanes have become "too complex to fly." The aviation thread was the most notable stretch — he used a mass-casualty disaster two days prior as a springboard for anti-intellectual populism, never once mentioning the 157 victims. The overall mood was relaxed and self-assured, with no signs of anger or defensiveness.

Full digest for 2019-03-12: https://trump.fm/date/2019-03-12/analysis

## Citation

- APA: Trump, D. J. (2019, March 12). Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.... [Social media post]. X (Twitter). trump.fm. https://trump.fm/post/x_1105468569800839200
- MLA: Trump, Donald J. "Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are..." X (Twitter), 12 Mar. 2019. trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/x_1105468569800839200. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.
- Chicago: Donald J. Trump, "Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are...," X (Twitter), March 12, 2019, archived at trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/x_1105468569800839200.

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