Trump has the IQ of an inbred tanning bed, says Gary Cohn

Despite the derogatory words of his subordinates and critics, Trump is not actually stupid at all. He’s just ignorant. I have to admit that I never thought such a completely ignorant person could possibly win the American Presidency. Jerry Ford was neither rocket scientist nor policy wonk, but he knew how government functioned, and he knew enough to realize what he didn’t know, allowing him to hire competent subordinates. Trump knows nothing of government, nor much of anything else, and that is compounded by his narcissism, which prevents him from admitting what he doesn’t know. The result is that, although he is not mentally slow, he’s basically incapable of learning. We assume, unfairly, that an inability to learn is always a sign of a feeble mind, so his critics deride his intellect.

Wrong. There are many factors that might cause an inability to learn, and feeble-mindedness is only one of them. There’s attention deficit order, for example, or memory loss caused by brain trauma, and some forms of mental illness.

Like pathological narcissism.

He is the President. He didn’t get to the White House by being dumb.  He pulled off something nobody dreamed possible. Whatever negative things one thinks about Trump, there is no questioning that he is one of most canny self-promoters and self-marketers in history. He makes Madonna seem like an amateur.

It is possible to blame some of his success on racism, sexism and the utter failure of the American school system, but the fact of the matter is that there have always been racists, sexists and uneducated people, but nobody was ever able to weaponize them as effectively as Trump. Perhaps life dealt him the lemons of ignorance, but he has actually turned his ignorance into the lemonade of exploitation. He has made ignorance an asset rather than a liability by using it to rev up his core audience. When you get right down to it, that is brilliant. In his own unusual way, he really is a genius.

Running for President while knowing absolutely nothing necessary to do the job was a bold strategy, Cotton, but it really did pay off for him!