The Hilarity of TDS Rants

A liberal friend of mine whom I consider somewhat intelligent wrote the following to justify his claim that President Trump is not very smart.

I agree that Trump is in many ways a deeply stupid, incurious, ignorant man—a man of staggering limitations. True. Yet his rise to popularity and power was not accomplished without a deep intuitive understanding of many things. How to connect with his target audience; how to exploit and inflame their worst impulses; how to use the media to gaslight entire populations; how to defy social norms and expectations until they no longer exist; how to co-opt other ambitious and unprincipled people and fold them into his machine; etc. To dismiss Trump’s success as luck is to ignore the extent to which Trump has been, not merely a product of a corrupt culture, but a change agent instigating and deepening that culture’s corruption. The seeds of what has become MAGA culture were always there, but Trump knew how to nurture those seeds and bring them to full fruit and flower. That is a kind of intelligence. As I say, in this profoundly narrow way, his skill reaches genius. All of these things can be true.

So Donald Trump is skilled in using the media to “gaslight entire populations”, “co-opt unprincipled people”, etc. At least he didn’t say “deplorable”. He goes on:

Trump’s cruelty and racism have been evident for as long as I’ve been aware of him (i.e., going back to the 1980s and the Central Park Five case). Still, plenty of people with those qualities have not been capable of his success as a demagogue. And, before he was a demagogue, Trump was an entrepreneur with a revealingly mixed record: a successful Manhattan real estate developer; a failed Atlantic City casino developer; a successful TV star; an unsuccessful marketer of steaks and vodka, etc. Generally speaking, the more the business had to do with branding, publicity, and political deal-making, the better he did, while the more the business had to do with competence in anything else, the worse he did. Social and para-social relationships and public perceptions are what Trump knows how to manage and exploit, and that‘s where he does his best work. That’s what made him a successful demagogue where other would-be demagogues have failed.

Trump has maintained his core constituency and dominated the Republican Party, turning it into the Party of Trump, for close to a decade now. He has always had enemies in the GOP and people who would have liked to destroy him, marginalize him, or take his place, but he has bent the entire party to his will and remained on top. No one accomplishes such a thing without skill. His stupidity and ignorance have obviously cost him in various ways—if he were not stupid and ignorant, it’s possible that he would have been even more successful—but the fact that he has triumphed so significantly in spite of his stupidity and ignorance only highlights the effectiveness of his strengths.

So if Trump wasn’t stupid he would be even more successful. Really? I am trying to think what that would actually look like. Maybe being President of Earth? Emperor of the Solar System?

His current unpopularity and his behavior in the midst of it may be related to a combination of factors. For one thing, Trump is nearly 80 and in obvious physical and cognitive decline; he is no longer doing his best work, and may be much less effective in the months and years ahead. He is also, of course, stupid, and has always made stupid mistakes. But, also, now in his second term, Trump cannot hope to stay in power in 2028 (or even to pass the torch to Vance or whoever else to try to cement his legacy) by normal means. He must work as hard as possible to change the rules of the game, to make the United States a different country than it has been until now. This means taking risks and doing divisive things. He is no longer as concerned with weekly poll numbers as with with how much of Project 2025 and/or his own authoritarian agenda he can implement. If his approval ratings drop to 20 percent but he can stay in power at that level, he’ll take that deal.

I have laughed and laughed about this over the last few days. There is so much inadvertent humor here. I wonder if he has seen the CNN polls showing how high Trump’s approval is. But projection is one hell of a drug. This was all spilled out in response to a point where I told someone a lot of people voted for Trump because Harris came across as so stupid, to which my friend spat back that Harris’s IQ “dwarfs” Trump’s.

I can’t claim to know whether he really believes that or just wants to.