Trump Camp Says Lengthy Pause During NRA Speech Was For Dramatic Effect'
www.mediaite.com

... Former President Donald Trump stood silently for more than 30 seconds during his speech at the National Rifle Association Convention Saturday as dramatic music swelled behind him.

Trump was more than an hour into his speech and was praising the state of Texas, where the convention was being held:

Many came here with nothing but the boots or their feet, the clothes on their back, and the gun in their saddle. Together they helped make America into the single greatest nation in the history of the world.

Trump then stopped talking and appeared to shake his head.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Mediaite, "It was clearly a strong dramatic effect, which has occurred previously because when any American reflects upon the disastrous Biden presidency, they can't help but be concerned about the direction of the country."

After about 33 seconds, Trump picked right up where he left off, saying, "But now, we are a nation in decline." ...

Trump pauses address to nation to take 2 big swigs of water (2017)
www.seattletimes.com

Presidential fluency (2017)
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

... In a number of posts about Donald Trump's rhetorical style, I've noted how seldom he uses filled pauses such as UM and UH in spontaneous speech, compared to other public figures. For example, in "The narrow end of the funnel" (8/18/2016), I noted that filled pauses were 8.2% of Steve Bannon's words (in a sample passage from a panel discussion on The Future of Conservatism), and 4.0% of Hilary Clinton's words in a Vox interview, while three of Trump's unscripted rally speeches had between 0% and 0.05% filled pauses, and in a CNBC interview, Trump used 74 filled pauses in 5329 words, for a rate of 1.4%.

Like many others, I've noted how often Trump abandons a discourse thread in mid-phrase, sometimes returning to it after a digression, and sometimes just forging ahead with new themes. (See e.g. "The em-dash candidate" (8/15/2016) and "Disfluencies and smiles" (9/30/2016).) And I've certainly also noted his fondness for phrasal repetitions, sometimes literal and sometimes transformed or paraphrased, which is one of the factors leading to his low rate of vocabulary display. (See "Donald Trump's repetitive rhetoric" (12/5/2015), "Trump's rhetorical style" (12/26/2015), "Vocabulary display in the CNN debate" (9/18/2015), "Political vocabulary display" (9/10/2015), and "More political text analytics" (4/15/2016).) ...

Whoa, interesting article.

But moving on....

Trump pauses address to nation to take 2 big swigs of water (2017)
www.seattletimes.com

So, it seems to me that the spokesperson for fmr Pres Trump is making an assertion for which there may be no substantiation.

Please correct me (with links) if I am incorrect in my opinion.

thx.