I was going to say something similar. Go back to interviews in the 80s. He’s an ass, but reasonably coherent. He even had the insight to say he had too much baggage in his personal life to ever be successful in politics.
My apologies for misinterpreting your post, but I blame it on the fact that I am in Canada, where we are entitled – nay, required – to consume at least one stiff Caesar once the sun is over the yardarm, usually followed by a couple of mid-afternoon martinis. It is a protocol that we follow religiously, and it sometimes impairs our judgment. Sorry! 
I agree. He’s intelligent, but he’s got huge blind spots in the sense that all his intelligence and effort is entirely self-serving. He seems incapable of actually feeling empathy or otherwise doing anything that’s not aimed at furthering his own personal ends. And he’s absolutely averse to anything that might make him look weak or otherwise less than his own auto-cultivated macho image.
And what makes him seem stupid is that his own personal self-centeredness routinely (always?) overrides his intelligence, when something threatens to make him look weak, or is perceived as disadvantageous to him personally. So he does stuff that is kind of counterproductive, like using a sharpie to draw the hurricane track to fit what he said, rather than just fess up that he was wrong. Looks totally dumb, but if you think about it from the standpoint that he’d rather do something stupid than intentionally do something he perceives as “weak”, it makes a perverse sort of sense.
I don’t know enough about psychology to diagnose him, but I found during his term and afterward, that if you apply the questions of “what’s the most self-centered thing he could do?” and “What’s going to make him look the most macho, in a man-born-in-the-1940s kind of way?”, I could usually predict his behavior, or at least realize why he did something afterward.
I disagree. I think Trump somehow hit upon a nerve in the white, uneducated, blue-collar demographic, and ran with it. And in some sort of unholy synergistic amplification, his narcissism, macho-image, and propensity to insult everyone played right into that- sort of a “he hears us, and he sticks it to everyone else.” kind of way.
Jeb Bush probably wouldn’t have been elected. Nor would Marco Rubio. Or any of the other Republican candidates, honestly. But Trump tapped into something much more feral than the other Republican candidates, and more importantly, was willing to bathe in it, because it furthered his personal ends.
Agreed. I’m not even sure that he, personally, holds as a value or opinion most of the MAGA talking points that uses in his speeches (except for, I suspect, the racist ones), but when he finds something that gets his fans riled up, he leans into it.
My understanding is that he didn’t/doesn’t particularly care about building the wall across the Mexican border, but when he saw the visceral reaction that “Build the wall!” got in his speeches, he rolled with it.
Same thing with the skinheads, white supremacists, etc… I’m not personally convinced that he’s that way himself, but he’s certainly willing to ally with them if it furthers his own ends.
Or insulting Israel and its government while calling Hezbollah “smart” because Bibi said something nice about Biden.
Nah-- what she underestimated was the public’s willingness to overlook stupidity. Especially when it had a penis and she didn’t.
Well, a little tiny teeny-weeny one, according to Stormy.
yeah, but I don’t think that news was out yet
I disagree with those people who are saying Trump is intelligent. I see no evidence of this.
I don’t consider myself to be a genius. But if I somehow stumbled into the Presidency, I’d be smart enough to know I should surround myself with advisors who are smarter than me and have experience in government. Then I would do what they tell me and take the credit. I wouldn’t be a great President but I’d only be as bad as Warren Harding.
Trump wasn’t smart enough to do that. Trump is dumb enough to not understand he’s dumb. He thinks he’s a genius and knows better than everyone else. Trump is the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This is why Trump isn’t just a bad President; he’s our worst President.
And I disagree with your disagreement. In an agreeable sort of way naturally.
I feel the white trash vote was already fired up by eight years of Obama being President. They were looking to lash out against the Democrats regardless of which Republicans was nominated. And 2000 proved that the second place Republican being appointed President wasn’t some fluke that just happened for Trump.
No, it was out, she just had trouble seeing it.
He did do that. Sure he had some idiot yes men in the cabinet but he had some good people he should have listened to. Like Mattis and Kelly. Even Tillerson was better and more independent than I had originally thought he would be. Then he got pissed off whe they told him he couldn’t or shouldn’t do some of the things he wanted to do.
Yup, and over the course of his administration, he largely chased off the “adults in the room” from his original cabinet, due to them not being yes-men, and replaced them with less competent, but compliant, individuals.
I disagree. I don’t feel Trump ever made any effort to listen to any of his advisors, much less follow their advice.
Where did I say that he did? I said he did appoint some good people he should have listened to. I’m not sure what you are disagreeing to.
The error you are making here is equating “smart” with “wanting to be good at the job of President.”
Yes, an ordinary schlub like you or I who was magically elevated to the role would realize we were in over our head, do our damnedest to build a good staff, then listen to them. But that’s not smart or dumb. That’s “trying to do a good job”. trump has no such interests.
When he got into the job, his only goals were how to profit from it, how to make its annoyances go away, how to settle scores using his power, and how to maximize the adulation of his citizens subjects. In his f***-ed up low cunning way he did just that. And fairly sucessfully.
Meanwhile other factions of the republican criminal party were allowed to run rampant, packing the SCOTUS, putting placemen in the cabinet and letting them gut or politicize their departments, etc. To the degree trump cared, he was just enjoying presiding over chaos being visited on his betters.
I agree completely with you that trump was the worst president to date, and with any decent luck the worst president the USA will ever have. But not because he was stupid. But because he wasn’t trying to be President. He was trying to steal the Presidency.
It’s hard to gauge a person’t intelligence. If I had to bet, I’d say he’s about as smart as 50% of the population, give or take 5%. What is lacks is knowledge. He’s quite uneducated and intellectually incurious. I believe he never cracked a book in college, he just bullshitted his way through or had people write papers for him or take exams on his behalf. He seems unaware of basic principles of science and knows nothing about history or government. His lack of education and self awareness would make him indistinguishable from the village idiot were it not for his one skill of whipping people who are as uneducated and incurious as he is into a frenzy. He’s the most successful demagogue in world history. He will be studied years from now, not by political scientists but by psychiatrists. He’s a narcissistic sociopath of the first order.
I appear to have misunderstood your post. I wrote that if I was President, I would surround myself with smart advisors and then do whatever they said. You responded by saying “He did do that.”