Is Trump smart or does his stupidity just play well?

[Echobelly]

DH reckons that, although Donnie Dumptruck is in most ways thick as mince, he has a smartness for how he gets a response from people, that he knows what he's doing when he tweets some aggressive idiocy.

I think he is not intelligent in any way - eg he's not thinking 'If I blame other people for messes I created, that will take attention away from me', which is what DH suggests. I think he is so moronic and childish that he genuinely doesn't believe anything bad is his fault

AIBU for thinking he doesn't know what he's doing, it just happens to play well with people who think Trump represents a successful, smart person? Or is he actually calculating the effects of what he says?

My sister in America says some manufacturers are now putting out warnings not to drink their products. But you just know some one has tried it (and probably before Trump said anything - if you can think it, someone has done it).

yeah, but come on, these are pretty funny.

They have lightened my day for sure.

He is a thick, stupid, dim, simple, foolish imbecile.

He does use certain tropes, that speak to his target audience. The way he communicates directly through Twitter is marketing genius.
His use of repetition, spelling things out, not using big words but simple words. He knows who he’s talking to. As a business man, or a television entertainer, it works.
As President Of The United States... It just shouldn’t be happening! But somehow, here we are. Trump is not as stupid as he looks, and some very powerful people want him in the White House.

I think what your OH is describing is manipulation which is very different than genuine smartness.

In a sad and bad way he is comedy gold. Only the Trump could suggest we inject disinfectant to kill CV. To think he is the leader of the free world. 🙄😟

He will be laughed and people horrified for the rest of time, in medical history years from now people will say “Remember that president who said about injecting disinfectant to cure Covid 19” utter joke but he’s deadly.

the two options are not mutually exclusive.... There is no doubt that he is not very sharp and very lazy. But that does not mean he has not learn a few tricks. He is good at getting attention and seem to manage to deflect responsability in ridiculous ways. However, I am not sure if this "ability" is due to anything he does, or the fact that a very large portion of people are also very stupid and do not see the same old tricks played over and over.

Love that in the middle of this page of this thread there was a pop up advert for an online IQ test. Hope others got that too...

Greedy egotist. And not very bright. And a weird shade of orange (does he think we don’t know he colours his skin?)

he's an example of someone with zero humility. He had a privileged upbringing and has never had to scrape by. He thinks he's a god.

^I think this is true. Probably never got told no, never got told he was wrong, from childhood onwards. "You can grab em by the pussy, you can do whatever you want". Decades and decades of doing what he wants and saying what he wants, surrounding himself with yes men, has led him to the point where he thinks he is brilliant. And yes to the Emperor's new clothes. How did at least one journalist in that press conference not lose it and fall about laughing and have to be carried out? Granted they would never be allowed in again...but come on.

I think the dementia theory is correct too and wonder how bad it will get before they have to pull him off the stage with a sheep crook like in cartoons, and what excuse will be given at the time, and what kind of retrospective judgement will be on those who should have stepped in sooner and didn't.

RingaRosie
As President Of The United States... It just shouldn’t be happening! But somehow, here we are. Trump is not as stupid as he looks, and some very powerful people want him in the White House.

The only different between him and the opposition are the opposition are worse at marketing.

I think the orange skin and hair are somewhat intentional. Look at the pale skin round his eyes, and imagine his whole face was that colour, and his hair was old-man white grey. He would just look like an overweight, baggy grey old man, totally unremarkable. The orange is ridiculously fake and clown like, but you get kind of used to it being part of his brand and none of the others in shot look like that. It draws your eye to him. And it does make him look younger when you stop concentrating on the fakeness of it. If he looked as old as he is, and rambled like he does, the dementia thing would have gained more traction, I think.

As someone on twitter said - Maybe he’s washing his face in dettol already.

I think people like to imagine that he's actually some sort of evil genius because the idea that a total idiot can become president of the USA makes them uncomfortable. They read that stuff about how clever Boris Johnson is despite his "loveable buffoon" act and extrapolate that to Trump. But there is a very very clear difference. Trump can barely string a coherent sentence together. Nothing about his actions suggests he is calculating in any way. He just deflects and flings insults like a primary-school-aged child.

No, I don't think he's clever in any way.

I didn't think any human could use the word sarcastic so many times:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/trump-disinfectant-bleach-sarcastic

He reminds of the kind of pupil who gets caught out being snide/bullying and says it was joke and simply won't admit anything else.

I assume after the bleach press conference debacle he was taken on one side and told people are going to die and he will be blamed.

Trump made a very astute remark in relation to voting. If the US were to allow wholesale post votes, there would never be another republican president and the republican party know it's true. He's not the smartest in the room but he can make a sale and it just needs to be to the right people. I think he will win the next election. The democrats needed to choose someone who could verbally dance rings round trump and I sadly don't think Biden can do it.

Can you imagine Trump's PR team's faces as this words about injecting disinfectant left his lips... they must have been like OMG 🤦‍♀️

I don't know. I think Trump's PR team have maybe the easiest job on Earth. Trump can say or do basically whatever he likes, he'll still likely get re-elected.

TheEyeOfTheProvidence** hahahaha yep you're probably right!

With coronavirus lockdown, Trump as President and him saying all this nonsense.... I sometimes feel I'm not in reality anymore. Like The Truman Show or something. Life is just getting weirder and weirder.

Whoever though that there would ever be a President spouting such utter dangerous rubbish...and getting away with it?!

I think it's really baffling for non Americans to understand why huge swathes of the population would vote for him. He's just so weird. I think there's a real mistrust of intellectualism there, of people who are perceived as thinking they are "better" simply because they have an education. This was what the hatred of Hilary Clinton was about imo (as well as her being a woman).

I mean, I'm no Boris Johnson fan but at least he is well educated though not, I wouldn't say, particularly bright.

He is neither intelligent nor thick - simply extremely average, and has learned the con-man’s many tricks to try and make sure no-one knows this. He blames everyone else but himself for failures. He surrounds himself with a core group of family and sycophants that echo the day’s party line and clean up his mistakes. Any problem is with you, not him. He appeals to the MAGA base particularly because, even though they intrinsically know he is a member of the elite that is merely pandering to them, they recognise he just isn’t that smart - and they might have been brought up with an image of the elite being smarter and somehow better than them. And that isn’t Trump.

@TheSkyWasDark

Wow spot the contradictions in your post!

But... But... But... He's the cleverest person ever. He doesn't know anyone with a bigger IQ than him... He's told everyone himself so we know it's true. 🤣

He lets his arrogance and ego get in the way every time. No idea of how smart he is.