Trump is dumb.
By the way, did you know ‘dumb’ is spelled with a ‘b’? I’ve heard that most people don’t know that. Anyway.
For ten years, we have been sifting through the rubble of his every action and statement, looking for clues that will somehow uncover his master strategy. But there is none. He’s a stone-cold idiot.
To put it another way: he’s not smart. At all. In any capacity. To be very clear, a table would be a better President than Donald “Windmills Cause Cancer” Trump.
Some might say, But he’s street smart! Or Trump is smart enough to know what his base wants!
But that’s not true. It’s a hill I’ll die on. Trump’s motivation for action isn’t that he knows his base wants something. A narcissist has no working knowledge of what anyone else wants or needs. He is a prisoner of his own stupidity and narcissism. Trump only does what Trump wants to do, and people who are attracted to idiocy follow him like he’s a cult leader, and when they clap and laugh raise their fists and snarl and bark and holler Lock up the dumocrats! he loves loves loves it because he loves himself and nothing else.
The only thing Trump and his cult have in common is a singular and deep love for Trump. I believe it’s as simple as that.
People who really love watching a grown man act like a nincompoop simply can’t get enough of him, because he is a nincompoop and they love that. And President Smartypants loves being watched.
Look, I could go on (and probably will), but this piece isn’t necessarily about Trump’s blistering ignorance on all matters great and small; it’s about…us. Because it gets old talking about Trump’s big brains, especially when we could be talking about what his mental incapacity says about us.
And I’m not talking about the mythical “forgotten Americans” who voted for him because “the elites left them behind,” etc. I’m talking about us. All of us. Believe it or not, I don’t think his presidency says, “We like stupid people.” I think it says something more insidious that we need to reckon with.