this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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"He's the worst chess grandmaster of the lot. Never stops playing, keeps ranking up, just coasting along on the sheer number of games he's played badly and learned from. Hands down, dumb as shit, I would only lose to him 99.95% of the time."
Again, I think the term "stupid" is just a pejorative at this point. If he was a democrat who kept winning upset elections and outfoxing supposedly superior opponents, what kind of liberal would talk about him this way?
He's not fixated on looking like a braniac, which means he's not getting caught in the Tucker Carlson trap of "You don't even know how many people are in Iran! How can you support bombing them?" Trump isn't claiming he's got the encyclopedia memorized. Much like Bush Jr and Reagan, he's focused on what plays well with the audience, not what sounds "smart" to the debate judges.
Is that stupid? Not when it accomplishes your intended goals.
Incidentally, one of the "dumbest" things Trump did in the wake of his '24 win was that ridiculous cryptocurrency that let him take bribes openly from foreign governments. It quickly restored him from "billionaire on paper" to "real fucking billionaire". Not because it was so insidiously clever or legalistic, but because the Biden DOJ never prosecuted him when he was out of office. What's more, the courts that Democrats refused to stack when they had a majority, have given him a free pass on criminal misconduct.
You can give a lot of credit for that to Mitch McConnell, as he spent his whole Senate career carefully staking appointed positions and encouraging career hires with Federalist Society flacks. But Trump's the guy who is going to capitalize on all McConnell's hard work and Clinton/Obama/Biden's passivity. So who really looks like the dumb-dumb here?
For direct comparison, I agree that Biden is stupid. Though I do think he was less stupid at earlier points in his life.
He is not capable of even looking like a brainiac unless the audience is also stupid or easily fooled (which is basically being temporarily stupid).
Trump still looks stupid. He definitely is opportunistic and he is surrounded by some people that think strategically and long-term. But he's still the sloppy, stupid opportunist. He's every bit the farcical version of Hitler that Marx's quip predicts.
I feel like you're reading into me saying he's stupid and thinking that means I don't think he's dangerous. I think he's plenty dangerous. I think he's been continually written-off as a clown that nobody would approve of let alone vote for several times partially because of his stupidity and his seeming unseriousness. But he's plenty serious and still plentifully, absurdly stupid.
His stupidity helped him on multiple fronts in US politics. It helped him create a frothing base of "supporters" (a term that I don't recall many using prior to 2016), it helped his political opponents dismiss him as a serious threat, and it even helped him on the debate stage where if he could string together a series of loud words it was considered a victory for him.