During the 2016 Republican primary, many of us got used to hearing Trump using the vocabulary of a third-grader. As Jack Shafer pointed out, Señor Trumpanzee "isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one" resisting "multisyllabic words and complex, writerly sentence constructions when speaking extemporaneously in a debate, at a news conference or in an interview. He prefers to link short, blocky words into other short, blocky words to create short, blocky sentences that he then stacks into short, blocky paragraphs."
Flattening the English language whenever he speaks without a script, Trump relies heavily on words such as “very” and “great,” and the pronouns “we” and “I,” which is his favorite word. As any news observer can observe, he lives to diminish his foes by calling them “losers,” “total losers,” “haters,” “dumb,” “idiots,” “morons,” “stupid,” “dummy” and “ disgusting.” He can’t open his mouth without bragging about getting the Clintons to attend his wedding, about how smart he is, the excellence of his real estate projects, the brilliance of his TV show, his generous donations to other political campaigns and so on. In a freakish way, Trump resembles that of Muhammad Ali at his prime-- except the champ was always kidding (even when he was right) while Trump seems to believe his claims (and often is wrong). Or perhaps he is afflicted with binary vision disorder, which renders all within his eyeshot either great or rotten.It’s obvious that Trump’s verbal deficit, as grating as it may be on the ears of the educated class, has not caused him much political pain. The media has noted the opposite: Trump’s overreliance on sports and war metaphors in his public utterances, his reductionist, one-dimensional policy prescriptions-- including nuanced geopolitical arguments such as get tough with China and Mexico, which are killing us!-- inspire trust in many rather than distrust. Trump’s rejection of “convoluted nuance” and “politically correct norms,” mark him as authentic in certain corners and advance his cred as a plainspoken guardian of the American way. By not conforming to the standard oratorical style, he distinguishes himself from the pompous politician. Less is more when you’re speaking Trumpspeak.
He warned his readers not to interpret the cagey and manipulative Trump's low Flesch-Kincaid grade-level scores "as a marker of low intelligence. Trump’s professional history indicates a skill at dealing and deceiving, inspiring and selling, and such attributes would likely qualify as a type of intelligence."He usually tries claiming-- without ever allowing the release of his academic records-- that he has a 156 IQ. No experts in the field think he has an IQ even approaching 156. Gary Denton estimates something in the 120s and reminds his readers that Trumpanzee "was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, not Wharton. He took some undergraduate classes at Wharton. He does not have an MBA from Wharton. He has a BA from UP. He did not graduate with honors from UP, it would have been noted in the graduation ceremony. He had transferred into UP after two years at Fordham University after meeting with a friendly admissions officer who knew his rich family."In any case, Trump is very conscious of the mediocrity of his IQ and has been publicly hysterical about it decades. As CNN pointed out yesterday, he's been challenging people to IQ tests for many years-- although he's never once actually agreed to do one. They found 22 instances with just a few minutes of light research on Twitter. He once claimed "We have by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled!" He couldn't have been talking about Rick Perry or Betsy DeVos but now he claims he wasn't talking about Rex Tillerson either, who he challenged to an IQ face off after T-Rex said aloud what everyone in Trump's orbit already know: the emperor is a fucking moron. So far Tillerson has ignored his imbecile boss' challenge, we;; aware that Trump would never submit himself to it.Unfortunately for Señor T, The Hill reached out to Mensa, "an international society whose only qualification for membership is a score in the top 2 percent of the general population on a standardized intelligence test." Obviously Trump isn't qualified to be a member but Mensa's communications director, Charles Brown, said they would be happy to host an IQ competition between Trump and Tillerson. "American Mensa would be happy to hold a testing session for President Trump and Secretary Tillerson."
When asked if any American president or Cabinet member has ever taken a Mensa admissions test before, Brown pointed out that while the group can confirm membership, it doesn’t release who’s actually taken the brain-busting exam.“But it’s important to note that our admissions test is not the sole way to qualify for Mensa-- there are hundreds of other prior-evidence tests that can qualify a member,” Brown said. “And the early success of many presidents no doubt exposed them to those types of qualifying avenues.”Naming former President Clinton’s experience as a Rhodes Scholar, Jimmy Carter’s work as a nuclear engineer and George H.W. Bush’s time as a military pilot, Brown told us, “Each could have encountered standardized academic tests (LSAT, GMAT, Miller Analogies), where qualifying scores would have propelled them into Mensa.”
Again, nothing in Trump's life has qualified him to be a member-- and his 120 IQ isn't going to get him in. The Independent reported that IQ experts say Trump would lose an IQ battle with Rex Tillerson. Joel Schneider, a Temple University professor who studies the assessment of intelligence said he'd bet on Tillerson, although he thinks Señor T would actually be considered "bright" compared to the general population (though not, he stipulated, compared to past presidents).
Trump’s more obvious public gaffes-- mispronouncing the Turkish President's name, or telling an audience in Israel he "just got back from the Middle East"-- don’t stem from a low intelligence, Mr Schneider said. Instead, they come his “lack of intellectual curiosity.”“His bad moves generally come from his narcissism, and his arrogance, and his extreme centeredness,” he said. “He doesn't seem to know very much, because all he cares about is himself. And he knows a great deal about himself.”Jack Naglieri, a psychological research professor who also develops intelligence tests, has a different theory. He believes Mr Trump is lacking in “executive function”-- the process of strategising, evaluating, decision making, and impulse control.According to Mr Naglieri, strong executive function is a “hallmark of intelligence," and makes for a more modern, reliable indicator than notoriously imprecise IQ tests.“It's very, very clear that Trump lacks this critical executive function,” Mr Naglieri said, pointing to the President’s outbursts, impulsivity, and apparent lack of empathy and insight.“The tweeting is an obvious impulse control problem,” Mr Naglieri said.As for who would win in a battle of the wits, the researcher is “absolutely” on team Tillerson.“Tillerson is clearly a person who has impulse control, who thinks things through,” he said. “...He's not blurting out, he's not impulsive, he's not flying off the handle. He's not telegraphing his anger like Trump does.”“I'd put my money on Tillerson any day,” he added.
And these academics aren't the only ones betting against Señor Trumpanzee. As you can see in their little betting odds sheet just above, the European oddsmakers at BetOnline.ag see Tillerson as the odds on favorite to win that matchup. Maybe Trump shouldn't have been bellowing to the Pentagon about a 10-fold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which is apparently what impelled Secretary Tillerson to explain to everyone within earshot that the orange-hued baboon that he works for is a "fucking moron" in the first place.
