Often when I visited my first girl friend, Doreen, on Avenue Z in Brooklyn, either just before or just after my bar mitzvah, I would sometimes run into the Trump family. Trump’s crooked bigoted father had a development down the street from her parents’ house. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the notorious Trump family as lowlife shysters. One of their tenants, Woody Guthrie, wrote a song about the place, “Old Man Trump,” about what bigoted shits they were.Trump was never accepted by legitimate businessmen in New York… because he was never a legitimate businessman. He always reeked of corruption, racism and his Mafia affiliations. Trump cheated everyone-- big and small-- for his entire miserable life. And he still is. There were around 125 CEOs and other business leaders at the annual Yale School of Management business symposium last week. Asked to rate Trump on his first 5 months in office, only one gave him an “A.” Half gave him an “F” and another 21% rated him a “D.” Businessmen know he’s a con man.Those voting included CEOs of major corporations like Merck, IBM, Wells Fargo, Blackstone-- “not a granola-eating crowd of Democrat entrepreneurs. It's a cross-section of the business community, including some who are quite pro-Trump. [And they are] growing disenchanted with Trump as his administration struggles to implement its economic agenda amid scandal and missteps.” They think he’s harming America’s standing in the world and worry that his budget isn’t sound. Forbes reported that “the fact that 89% of those polled did not rank Trump with even a B grade for his job thus far seems remarkable, given demonstrable attempts to ingratiate himself with this very group. In January, Trump promised to cut corporate taxes and decrease regulation. In April, Trump ran a series of meetings with prominent business leaders.”Most doubt Trump has what it takes to pull it off. And it isn’t just business leaders who have come around to realizing Trump’s a big bag of wind who lacks the ability to get anything done. Max Boot, an anti-Trump Republican wrote in the new Foreign Policy Magazine that Trump Is Proving Too Stupid to Be President. “I’m starting to suspect,” he wrote, “that Donald Trump may not have been right when he said, “You know, I’m like a smart person.” The evidence continues to mount that he is far from smart-- so far, in fact, that he may not be capable of carrying out his duties as president.” He doesn’t accept the defense from Trump enablers like Paul Ryan that Trump is just ignorant, not stupid.
Trump has had a lifetime-- 71 years-- and access to America’s finest educational institutions (he’s a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he never tires of reminding us) to learn things. And yet he doesn’t seem to have acquired even the most basic information that a high school student should possess. Recall that Trump said that Frederick Douglass, who died in 1895, was “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.” He also claimed that Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War, “was really angry that he saw what was happening in regard to the Civil War.”Why does he know so little? Because he doesn’t read books or even long articles. “I never have,” he proudly told a reporter last year. “I’m always busy doing a lot.” As president, Trump’s intelligence briefings have been dumbed down, denuded of nuance, and larded with maps and pictures because he can’t be bothered to read a lot of words. He’d rather play golf.The surest indication of how not smart Trump is that he thinks his inability or lack of interest in acquiring knowledge doesn’t matter. He said last year that he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”How’s that working out? There’s a reason why surveys show more support for Trump’s impeachment than for his presidency. From his catastrophically ill-conceived executive order on immigration to his catastrophically ill-conceived firing of Comey, his administration has been one disaster after another. And those fiascos can be ascribed directly to the president’s lack of intellectual horsepower.How could Trump fire Comey knowing that the FBI director could then testify about the improper requests Trump had made to exonerate himself and drop the investigation of Flynn? And in case there was any doubt about Trump’s intent, he dispelled it by acknowledging on TV that he had the “Russia thing” in mind when firing the FBI director. That’s tantamount to admitting obstruction of justice. Is this how a smart person behaves? If Trump decides to fire the widely respected special counsel Robert Mueller, he will only be compounding this stupidity.Or what about Trump’s response to the June 3 terrorist attack in London? He reacted by tweeting his support for the “original Travel Ban,” rather than the “watered down, politically correct version” under review by the Supreme Court. Legal observers-- including Kellyanne Conway’s husband-- instantly saw that Trump was undermining his own case, because the travel ban had been revised precisely in order to pass judicial scrutiny. Indeed, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in refusing to reinstate the travel ban on June 12, cited Trump’s tweets against him. Is this how a smart person behaves?You could argue that Trump’s lack of acumen is actually his saving grace, because he would be much more dangerous if he were cleverer in implementing his radical agenda. But you can also make the case that his vacuity is imperiling American security.Trump shared “code-word information” with Russia’s foreign minister, apparently without realizing what he was doing. In the process, he may have blown America’s best source of intelligence on Islamic State plots-- a top-secret Israeli penetration of the militant group’s computers.Trump picked a fight on Twitter with Qatar, apparently not knowing that this small, oil-rich emirate is host to a major U.S. air base that is of vital importance in the air war against the Islamic State.Trump criticized London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, based on a blatant misreading of what Khan said in the aftermath of the June 3 attack: The mayor had said there was “no reason to be alarmed” about a heightened police presence on the streets-- not, as Trump claimed, about the threat of terrorism. In the process, Trump has alienated British public opinion and may have helped the anti-American Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, win votes in Britain’s general election.Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord apparently because he thinks that global warming-- a scientifically proven fact-- is a hoax. His speech announcing the pullout demonstrated that he has no understanding of what the Paris accord actually is-- a nonbinding compact that does not impose any costs on the United States.Trump failed to affirm Article V, a bedrock of NATO, during his visit to Brussels, apparently because he labors under the misapprehension that European allies owe the United States and NATO “vast sums of money.” In fact, NATO members are now increasing their defense spending, but the money will not go to the United States or to the alliance; it will go to their own armed forces. Trump has since said he supports Article V, but his initial hesitation undermines American credibility and may embolden Russia.Trump supporters used to claim that sage advisors could make up for his shortcomings. But he is proving too willful and erratic to be steered by those around him who know better. As Maggie Haberman of the New York Times notes: “Trump doesn’t want to be controlled. In [the] campaign, [he] would often do [the] opposite of what he was advised to do, simply because it was opposite.”The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet certify that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” he can be removed with the concurrence of two-thirds of both houses. That won’t happen, because Republicans are too craven to stand up to Trump. But on the merits perhaps it should. After nearly five months in office, Trump has given no indication that he possesses the mental capacity to be president.
