Stupid.
Intelligent people, journalists and pundits, have had it rough because of Trump. Their mandate is to report on major figures in American life and offer analyses, critiques and opinions. And Trump, inarguably if nauseatingly, is a major figure. Descriptions of him have become an lengthening string of negative qualities and egregious pathologies. Quite correctly, too.
To me, though, Trump’s most salient characteristic is stupidity.
Trump is a stupid man.
Today I read a couple of news articles and columns about his CNN appearance last night (I am unable to listen to him). I read full quotes of things he said.
The guy is a dope. His vocabulary is severely limited. He can’t produce a sentence that has any consistency or logic or meaning. Oh, well, there are two consistencies: lying, and a seven-year-old’s delight in outrage. He makes up stuff, all the time. Even there he’s stupid: the stuff he makes up is the same stuff he’s been making up and spewing out for years. It seems his brain is incapable of invention or even development of the phony stuff. All that brain is capable of doing is memorizing the same phony stuff.
He’s stupid. On top of being stupid, he’s also an ignoramus. Anyone who applauds him, believes him and laughs at his super-ugly misogyny, his racism, his inherent violence is also stupid. And ignorant.
Stupid. Whatever else this loathsome person is, his core is stupidity.