Let the shit throwing commence. Is Trump dumb?
Guest Post by Steve Chapman
Donald Trump has many serious flaws, including incorrigible dishonesty, rampant narcissism, contempt for women and a fashion sense that makes him think that hairstyle is flattering. But nothing compares to his most prominent, crippling and incurable defect: He’s dimmer than a 5-watt bulb.
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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reported to have called the president a “moron” – emphasizing that term with an emphatic adjective I can’t repeat here. Forced to hold a news conference to praise the president’s intelligence, Tillerson was too honest to deny what he had said.
The late William T. Kelley, who taught Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” says Trump had “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.”
Trump’s feeble-mindedness is on daily view. When an Uzbek immigrant was arrested for allegedly driving a truck down a Manhattan bike path, killing eight people, the president responded in thunderously stupid ways. First, he tweeted that he had “just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program.” If you can step it up, why didn’t you do that before?
He fumed that the alleged killer wanted an Islamic State flag for his hospital room. Really? The guy reportedly killed eight people, and the flag is what steams you? Trump demanded the death penalty, opening the way for the suspect’s lawyers to argue that the president has made it impossible for him to get a fair trial.
The military judge announced he would count Trump’s statement as “mitigation evidence,” which may be why he ended up giving Bergdahl no prison time. Not only was Trump’s remark unnecessary and inappropriate; it was self-defeating.
He’s just not bright enough to make connections between his conduct and its consequences. Trump’s travel ban has lost repeatedly in court because he has made clear that he has an unconstitutional goal: shutting out Muslims because of their religion. If he had kept quiet, he might have gotten his way.
The evidence of his dimwittedness flows as continuously and voluminously as the Mississippi River. His tweets are studded with misspellings, random capitalizations and mystifying quotation marks.
He taps out tweets that flagrantly contradict what he tweeted when Barack Obama was president, making himself look ridiculous. When he holds forth on policy issues, it’s excruciatingly apparent he has no idea what he’s talking about.
Trump relies on a vocabulary the size of a fourth-graders. To combat opioid abuse among teens, he favors “telling them, ‘No good, really bad for you in every way.'” Those paper towels he tossed to a crowd in Puerto Rico were “very good towels.” He wanted to call the tax reform bill “the Cut Cut Cut Act.”
He pretends to be a master negotiator, but he has failed to get the Republican Congress to repeal Obamacare, enact protections for immigrants brought here illegally as children, and fund his border wall.
Trump tries to conceal his intellectual deficiency by insisting how smart he is. “I went to an Ivy League college,” he said last month. “I’m a very intelligent person.” He has to make such affirmations because all the evidence indicates his cranium contains an airless void.
I don’t mean to suggest his supporters are dumb. There are plenty of intelligent people who voted for him and plenty of stupid ones who didn’t. But the smart Trump supporters don’t hold his intellect in awe.
After Tillerson’s “moron” comment was reported, Trump said, “I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
I’m sure plenty of readers are now saying I’m the stupid one, with a brain far inferior to Trump’s. They may be right. So I put a challenge to him: We both take an IQ test, administered by an independent body, with the results to be made public.
This is a great chance to dazzle the world with his peerless mind. It’s a chance for him to humiliate someone in the “fake news media” with his towering intellect.
But I’m betting Trump will never submit to any process that would document his actual intelligence for the public to see. He’s dumb. But not that dumb.
Steve Chapman is a columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune. His twice-a-week column on national and international affairs, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in some 60 papers across the country. Steve Chapman came to the Tribune in 1981 from the New Republic magazine, where he was an associate editor. Steve Chapman has contributed articles to several national magazines, including Slate, The American Spectator, National Review and The Weekly Standard. Born in Brady, Texas, in 1954, Steve Chapman grew up in Midland and Austin. Steve Chapman attended Harvard University, where he was on the staff of the Harvard Crimson. He graduated with honors in 1976 and later did graduate work at the University of Chicago. Steve Chapman has three children and lives in suburban Chicago.
Trump is dumb, says Chapman, a liberal hack who comes to us from the New Republic, famous for finding the good points of Stalin, Mao and Castro. No, Trump is not dumb, he just ignores the “rules” of twits like Chapman. They are unable to process the thought that a man was elected president who has tital contempt for their crowd. Funny that nobody ever called Trump dumb until he threatened their power, their rice bowls and their vile world view.
Yeah Trump is so stupid he sees opportunity where others saw only problems. One year to the day after his election one of his biggest critics, Prince al Waleed bin Talal is under arrest along with the Wahabbist faction of the Saudi clergy and Royal family and Trump’s ally Mohammed Bin Salman is the Crown Prince in charge.
While the Bush family, the Clinton’s and Obama were content to hold hands or grovel for Saudi money, stupid Trump wanted some action on the part of the Saudi’s to clean up their act and he just got it. How goddamned dumb was that?
One year to the day of Trump’s election ISIS has lost every city it ever held and is on the run. ISIS may have been the junior varsity team that Obama couldn’t defeat but Trump has kicked their ass.
Why does’t Steve Chapmen run for President? Also wasn’t Bush 2 considered dumb by Kerry until the Yale grades showed Bush to have slightly higher C+ GPA than Kerry. Apparently, a valid comparison since they were college contempories. Of course by the grade standards of today they both would be dolts. Furthermore, Bush had higher SAT and AFQT scores than Kerry with no evidence either had taken a Stanley Kaplan cram course. BTW what happened to Obama’s transcripts and score reports?
prusie,
you’re showing how dumb you are–
kerry,obama,clinton-they’re democrats,therefore they are smart and even if they are not,they Care about people-do republicans care about people,children,clean water,fido,tommy the trannie?
go edumacate yourself!
Unit…..all good, except that Trump or the US did not kick ISIS ass; it was SAA, Russia, Iran (Republican Guard), and Hezbollah.
It was Western Air Power, freed from Obama ROE , that did most of the damage and allowed ground forces to ‘mop up’ what was left of Isis troops in Mosul and Raqqa.
Of course there was criticism that the death toll was too high in Mosul and Raqqa because ISIS fighters hid among civilians but it worked. It always does.
It was Russian Air Power – not U.S. (which managed to expend large quantities of ordinance w/out hitting much of anything – as a result of “phony” intelligence from the CIA (which created ISIS in the first place)) that took out ISIS resistance in Iraqi territory.
True, but Trump gave them a wink and a nod, which was about all he could do with Israeli agents swarming in DOD, State, the CIA and the White House.
If Trump is dumb, I want to be dumb.
Intellect is highly overvalued these days. We live in a time where our intellectuals are usually proven to be the biggest idiots in the world. People like Obama, Bernanke, Yellen, Summers and a host of others who were supposed to be so smart are actually morons and idiots par excellence. Nassem Taleb calls ’em “intellectuals-yet-idiots.”
What IS undervalued is common sense. How else could Trump be so correct about the big problems of our day; corrupt media and politicians, the problem of Islam, pointing out the absurdity of open borders to name a few? Trump is running circles around the supposedly smart people. And how come he keeps on winning, winning, winning?? (http://gulfcoastcommentary.blogspot.com/2017/10/trump-keeps-winning.html)
*He is winning against all the scumbag Obama-appointed judges that were overruled by the Supreme Court.
*He is winning against the corrupt and lying media complex
*He is winning against the NFL scumbags and fools and the clueless NFL corporate “leadership”
*He is winning and entirely correct to overturn the illegal DACA action taken by Obama
*He is winning for the American workers by overturning TPP and renegotiating NAFTA
*He is winning for American workers to approve the Dakota pipeline and removing regulations that closed coal mines.
*He is winning on the economy — now above 3% growth for 2 quarters which is first time that’s happened in 8 years.
*He was right to de-certify the Iran deal. It needs to be approved by the Senate. That whole charade and travesty is over. Winning!
*He was correct that he and his campaign were surveilled by wire taps. Winning!
*He is winning against the Russia collusion witch hunt. It turns out that those “investigating” Trump were themselves operatives in a bribery scheme to deliver 20% of US Uranium to the Russians for Hillary’s financial gain! That’s Mueller, Rosenstein, Comey, Clinton, Lynch. All of these people are criminals and liars. Same with Brennan, Clapper, Rice, Obama. They are all disgusting people
*Trump won by firing Comey even before it was known how compromised and corrupt the FBI has become.
*He is winning against Kim Jong Un of N. Korea.
*He is winning cooperation from the international community, including China and Russia, in response to the N. Korea threats
*He is winning jobs for Americans by rolling back regulations from Obama’s war on business and jobs
*He is winning against ISIS in the Middle East. Their main stronghold in Raqqa has been dissolved.
*He is winning against the immigration crisis created by Obama and previous administrations as border crossings are way down and criminal illegals are being rounded up across the country.
*He is winning by appointed justice Neil Gorsuch
*He is ended Obama’s war on police and border patrols
Thanx Doug !!!
“What IS undervalued is common sense.”
In a world that values illusion and delusion over truth and personal/societal betterment this is no surprise. Common sense has taken a shit kicking over the decades and ended up on life support some time around the mid 2000’s. It can make a come back though. Right now its got some momentum. Hopefully it can keep it.
‘Common sense’, like its first cousin ‘self-confidence’, are things that everyone thinks that they have, but in fact, very few actually do.
Steve C.
Spring, Texas
What is Trump`s ideology? He has been a lifelong NYC Elitist Progressive Democrat who supported the likes of the Clintons and Schumer, I think he received good advice from someone pointing out an obvious flaw of what the true attitude and thoughts of the American people were, and then putting it in the simplest quotes possible to sell it to them. What is Trump? P.T.Barnum, Hot Smoke and Sassafras!
He is a hard headed businessman, it’s his way or the highway. It’s a fault that hurts him in the political arena.
Yeah, the arena where go along to get along is the predominant theme everyone there is expected to follow.
The one he was elected to oppose and has been opposing since even before he was elected to do it.
Trump is crass, rude, arrogant, thoughtless, and a jackass. He is insensitive, self centered and generally obnoxious. His inability to be introspective enough to see these things as flaws creates many situations where he does and says things that are hurtful towards others. His lack of control and his inability to show restraint are offensive and unbecoming of a statesman.
He is the perfect guy for president in 2017. Go Trump.
It’s easy to make derogatory accusations.
Backing them up is a different thing.
Most accusers are good at one and really bad at the other, figure out which is which for yourself.
But does making every poll and every political commentator, with a few obvious exceptions, predicting his loss and Hillary’s win in the election as wrong as they could get make him dumb?
Again, figure the answer to that our for yourself.
Well, that was an entertaining read….
Keep in mind, this is coming from a man who in a philosophical sense, is standing on his head telling the rest of us we’re upside down. Of course he will look ‘stupid’ to them. The libs and Swamp Creatures are the one’s lacking in enough intelligence or perception to see how and why Trump picks the battles he does, says the things he does, and how he plays them constantly. So let me spell it out for the “mentally-handicaped’ leftards who cant understand Trump… he just smashed the way politics has been done for 50-100 years. He is a master of rhetoric (not perfect, but very, very good). He uses Twitter to his full advantage, and bypasses the old dinosaur gatekeepers of the media. He understands what the common man feels, needs, and wants, and he feels the pulse of the working class, despite his own incredible wealth. He always had this connection before he got into politics. Almost every move he makes is aligned with MAGA, and he’s trying to stick to his campaign promises pretty well (this alone is so antithetical to the Elites and Professional Politicians, it’s not wonder they cant understand him). And no mater how much they try to denigrate him, his connection with his supporters will only grow.
Steve Chapman is a two-bit writer and Donald Trump built a business worth billions. Hmmmmm. Like the typical hardcore liberal, he is completely blind to his own delusions and stupidity. Go Steve!
I don’t think someone who’s truly DUMB could become a real estate mogul from nothing. I do consider that he may be low on social skills and certain kinds of emotional intelligence, the kind that reads others. But that is not the same as IQ.
Low on social skills? Ever see his wife? You don’t think he’s good at reading people? That’s about the most basic business skill there is.
And most important/profitable.
this author is a dumb a$$… SGN
You are an idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Trump is the first president I have ever rooted for (and still do of course) and thoroughly enjoy watching work the crowd, media, the establishment and his enemies.
Gullible, naive, economically clueless, and lacking principles…..but not dumb (on the things that profit him immensely).
(1) Trump is as dumb as a fox, he was successful in Manhattan commercial real estate. He dealt successfuly with crooked politicians, unions, and bankers.
(2) The last 28 years (G.W. Bush to Obama) has taught me one thing, the Harvard / Ivy League educated elites are the dumb ones (in both/all parties). They have gotten us into ridiculous wars, 30% of adult age citizens not working, $20 trillion in debt, reduced the middle class by 10% – keeping wages flat for the last 16 years.
(3) The author is just another Harvard educated, liberal idiot. (IMHO)
I think it was Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death who pointed out the elite are actually mentally crippled because they all basically go to the same ivy league schools where they’re all taught by basically the same ivy league professors who teach them basically all the same ideas and methodology for dealing with problems and issues. With few or no competing ideas and world views to contend with, the elite are essentially stuck in an echo chamber in which only their vision applies and only their tools are available for dealing with issues. They’re crippled by their privileged experience and upbringing.
Yes, this is a problem in all societies imo.
Yeah, and they always remind you that they went to an Ivy League college, like this guy did in his bio. Stay classy, Steve.
And yet he is President of the United States of America.
Trump is not dumb.
But, he IS an idiot!
“You don’t have to pass an iq test to be in the senate, tho.” But you do have to fail an i(ntegrity)q test. As below, so above. Trump’s one of ‘em & has been for a long time.
A person who believes in macro evolution as opposed to micro evolution is acting as much upon faith as is the most believing Christian.
He has this uncanny ability to be dumb enough to allow his enemies enough rope to hang themselves.
What makes Chapman think Trump cares whether Bergdahl goes to prison? Because he said so? Is that all? Trump doesn’t give a shit whether Bergdahl goes to prison. In fact, it’s probably better for Trump that Bergdahl was let loose. Chapman is dumb.
Against all odds, the guy wins and makes Liberals go batshit crazy with TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). That alone is worth the price of admission.
Anyone like Chapman who thinks someone who pulls off the Houdini act of the century is dumb IS dumb…and jealous. They’re mad he derailed their idiotic ideology.
I don’t need to defend Trump-he’s got 140 characters to do that on his own.
What I do want to say is this:
Why is it every time the president is a Repube, the news is constantly focused on attacking their intelligence? And why is it every time the president is a Dumbo, they have nothing but praise for the largely unexamined resident’s intelligence? We were told for 8 years Barry Soetero was a genius, despite the total lack of any actual evidence of any kind, since practically his entire life history was sealed, hidden, or just plain nonexistent.
Trump probably isn’t the smartest guy in the world, but you don’t need to be smart to be the president, merely popular. Look what that reputation as a foreign policy genius got Hitlery. I think his genius is in reading his audience and saying what they want to hear. When he says something seemingly stupid from the hip, it generally resonates with the common public, which is probably more important than impressing the lamestream media, who already hate him.
Also, since the left and the media hate his guts and actually accuse him of being straight evil, I figure he’s free to pretty much be as bad as they accuse him of being (which is really, really bad). After all, they’ve accused him of being Hitler for over a year, so what has he got to lose if he really does do fascist totalitarian things? Will they call him Super Hitler or Double Hitler, or what? They’ve figuratively gone to the basement with him; they can’t take him down any lower.
So what will they do if he lives down to their expectations?
Let’s see, this guy graduated with honors from Harvard, was on the Crimson, and after decades in journalism he writes two columns a week that appear in 60 newspapers, which is about a thousand fewer than Li’l Abner ran in, and his highest professional position was as an associate editor at a magazine. I think we can safely assume that he was one of the herd who smugly declared that is was “impossible” for Trump too win.
Harvard just called, Steve, they want their degree back.
I’ve always thought Trump was too egotistical and never really liked him. But I like him better now as president. I love how he’s making such chaos in Washington.
The attacks on Donald Trump’s intelligence remind me of the mythical story of Henry Ford’s libel suit with the Chicago Times. The story claims Ford shut down the defence attorney by submitting himself to a variety of trivia questions before claiming he didn’t need waste his time on such facts when he could pick up his phone and call any expert he needed. The story appears to be mostly myth, like so many treasured American stories, but the sentiment is accurate. You don’t need to be a genius with a photographic memory if you are smart enough to hire the experts you need and listen to them.
One thing he benefits from as president is access to a lot of experts.
Intellectually shallow? Arguably. Philosophically rootless? No doubt about it. Dumb? He didn’t get where he is now by being fucking dumb.
He aint dumb but he’s master of deceit – he deceived most here.
Dishonesty is dysintelligent.
It’s lies upon lies that build these houses of cards. And the Kevin Spacey moments are built into them, too.
Masters of deceit are the dumbest, usually pathological\sociopathic, asses of all. Which indicates what’s salient about the unters who elevate them.
The unters & their ubers deserve each other. The trespass is their belief that they deserve everyone else, too. As said, dumb.
Trump dumb? Elected president out of nowhere.
Trump is a bit inexperienced in politics. But he seems likely to be the most stubborn guy on the planet. I think it entirely possible he will chip chip chip away with his itty bitty little hammer until he makes a shit load of rubble out of a big rock.
But make no mistake, he is not paranoid. The fuckers are out to get him. He has a chance if he can outlast them.
We have the president that an electronic device, Kardashian & Dancing With The Stars distracted population deserves – a former reality TV Star ! He is a fucking idiot.
There are ways of getting yourself into more trouble than you can by underestimating someone.
BUT
Underestimating someone is one of the surest ways to do it.
Steve C.
Spring, Texas