First saw this at Raw Story, though the original can be found at Robert Reich’s substack (he was Secretary for Labor under Bill Clinton in the 1990’s). It’s an absolutely brilliant compilation of anecdotes highlighting TFM’s (That F***ing Moron’s) lifelong stupidity without even touching on his increasing signs of outright dementia in recent years. Toward the end, Reich details the one ‘superpower’ TFM does seem to have in abundance (which makes him something of an idiot-savant I suppose?) — the ability to con large numbers of people about nearly everything.
While most of us have at least heard of much of these past evidence for TFM’s profound idiocy, Reich has deftly gathered them together in one place for your edification. I’ve included some of the juicier gems below, but the whole piece is definitely worth reading, enjoy!
My definition of stupidity is continuing to do something that has so far cost you a minimum of $91 million because you won’t stop doing it.
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The media continues to discuss Trump’s criminal indictments, and is — finally! — noticing that Trump is becoming less and less coherent. But why isn’t it reporting on something almost every lawmaker and journalist in official Washington knows — that Trump is remarkably stupid?
I don’t mean just run-of-the-mill stupid. I mean extraordinarily, off-the-charts, stupifyingly stupid.
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In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump explained that “I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood, he didn’t say it the way I said it either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.”
The media interpreted this as Trump trying to backpedal from his Hitler-ish remark. But what if Trump in fact doesn’t know anything about Adolf Hitler?
After all, he recently claimed that magnets don’t work in water, that the Civil War was unnecessary because it should have been “negotiated,” and that no one would know who Lincoln was if he hadn’t gone to war.
To which I would just add that TFM clearly didn’t know that at least some of Hitler’s ‘loyal’ generals tried to have him assassinated on more than one occasion.
Consider the views of the people who worked most closely with him during his presidency. Anyone remember when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “f—---- moron?”
Or when National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called him a “dope?” And Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and even Rupert Murdoch all referred to Trump as an “idiot?” (Technically, Murdoch called him a “f—---- idiot.”)
Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn described Trump as “dumb as s---,” explaining that “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”
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One of his professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Finance purportedly called Trump “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”
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But hold on. I ask myself: How could Trump have become president, and now clinch the Republican nomination for the presidency for a third time, if he doesn’t have something in the brain bank? Even if Trump doesn’t read, can’t follow a logical argument, and has the attention span of a fruit fly, I keep believing he must have some intelligence.
Well, it turns out there’s another form of intelligence, called “emotional intelligence.”
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This is where Trump’s brain outperforms the brains of ordinary mortals. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities — their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires — and use them for his own purposes.
To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman.
I believe he’s always been a conman. He conned hundreds of young people and their parents into paying to attend his nearly worthless Trump University. He conned banks into lending him more money even after he repeatedly failed to pay them. He conned contractors to work for him even with a well-deserved reputation for stiffing them. He’s been an even greater political conman.
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And now he’s conned most Republican voters into believing his utterly baseless claim that he won the 2020 election. Political conning is Trump’s genius.
This genius — combined with utter stupidity in every other dimension — poses the clearest and most terrifying danger to America and the world.