He is a moron. Smarter people than me say so!
I was going to bring up this point. How intelligent Trump might have been in 1964 (the year he started college) may not be an accurate reflection of how intelligent he is now. He’s seventy-one years old. He’s already older than every previous president except one (Reagan) was at the end of his term.
Absent actual published information, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The best people! I’m telling you, I’ve got all of the best smart people, and all of them say that Trump is a moron.
This article is somewhat speculative, but it compares his present-day speaking style (vocabulary, syntax and the complexity of his sentences) to his speaking style from 25 or 30 years ago. (Trump has been a public figure, at least in the New York area, since the early 1980s, so there is a lot of interviews and other television appearances to draw upon.)
The conclusion of this analysis is that there does seem to be signs of cognitive decline.
I always think of the rather old-fashioned term, low cunning. I don’t know what the connection is between that and IQ.
Speaking of IQ tests, can you imagine 45 having the patience to actually take one? After 5 minutes (if that) I can see him throwing it on the ground and calling it fake testing.
Whatever it is, I believe in would impossible to accurately measure it, or any other psychological assessment, for exactly these reasons.
One of the Menendez brothers was bought into Princeton, despite mediocre high school grades, by his father for $50,000. He didn’t last very long there.
Explain Ronald Reagan, then.
I argue that Reagan was of above-average IQ in 1980, too. IMHO, the vast majority of major-party presidential candidates are of above-average, perhaps high-above-average IQ.
The average-IQ person would wilt under the spotlight of a presidential campaign. They’d be known as the “Ummm, ahhh, hmmm…I don’t know, wait, I take that back” candidate.
Neither did the father.
‘W’ wasn’t exactly a genius!
So, Trump, then.
Nice cage, no bird.
I’m not a genius either, and yet I am in Mensa.
The minimum IQ to truly be called a genius is about half a standard deviation above the minimum to get into Mensa.
Edit: Mensa has offered to settle things once and for all.
Because “A fool can always find a greater fool to admire him.” doesn’t apply to people who aren’t fools.
I didn’t say ‘W’ wasn’t in mensa, I said he wasn’t a genius. I was being snarky, what I am saying is, Running for and winning the potus doesn’t necessarily make you a genius or smart. It makes you good at saying what the average voter wants to hear. That in itself may be a genius strategy, but you can buy that info. The worst president in my voting life was Jimmy Carter, and he probably is a verifiable genius. Trump is a moron, plain and simple. It is a scary world we’ve found ourselves in, to be sure!
Trump has the same sort of talent a predatory lizard has. His primary asset, and it is formidable, is a keen sense of timing and an eye for the jugular. As well as a complete lack of any sense of shame.
As for IQ, I find it difficult to believe he could sit still and focus long enough to complete an IQ test.
Trump loses his train of thought halfway through a tweet. He’d get distracted immediately after filling out his name at the top of the test.
He just told us he has an amazing IQ. I assume he took the IQ test offered by Trump University.
Snark aside - Ronald Reagan was pretty smart. For example, in his early days, he had a radio job reading the box score off the telegram wire (live) and making up color commentary for a baseball game as if he was watching it live. One time, line went down, and he had to fake it for an inning or two with no information… which he did flawlessly - then get caught back up. He was president of the actors’ guild in the 1950’s. (Thereby answering the trivia, which president was a former union leader?) He was a credible governor of California. His world-view may have been Pollyanna simplistic conservative as he got older, but he was no dummy. …until Alzheimers started toward the end of his presidency.
That’s OK, they can always be governor of Texas and Secretary of Energy. Right, Rick?
Seriously - watch any intelligent politician, left or right, speak about the issues of the day in an in depth interview rather than a 3-minute collection of sound bites - the smart ones can talk about the issues around Brexit or renewable energy or tax reform or North Korea and make it sound like they really understand the issues -because of course, they do.
JFK and RFK were smart fellows; LBJ had incredible political smarts; Nixon for all his flaws was also a very smart cookie and we’ve forgotten much of the other policies he brought in; Carter was in line to be one of the first nuclear sub captains (too bad he took al the family smarts and didn’t leave any for brother Billy); Reagan -see above; the real George Bush - Harvard education, diplomat, politician, head of the CIA (which requires serious smarts) and war hero. Clinton - Rhodes scholar, youngest governor of Arkansas, one of the youngest presidents. W- not up to the usual standards, but still moderately smart; he just didn’t stand out in a city where the top dogs were really smart. Obama - Harvard Law, head of Harvard Law Review - again, when he talks in depth about a topic, you can tell he understands it.
I blame the primary system. You have the vote spread among a dozen candidates, and since it doesn’t count for much, only the strongly motivated come out -so we see the fanatics determining which candidates the general get to choose from come the real election. People who don’t feel strongly about - let’s say, abortion - don’t all line up to support the candidates less passionate about abortion. As a result, the fringe voters vote for the most fringe candidates for the most un-American reasons, and those are the candidates in the general election.
We saw this in the most recent Alabama primary to replace Sessions. Turnout was about 17% of the electorate. So about 9% decided a flaming nutbar should be the next senator (bar a major backlash from moderate Republicans).