October 19: On This Day In 2017
Note: A previous OTDI — which focused on how Trump cheated on his SATs — also touched on today's topic. We don't mean to repeat ourselves; after all, the Trump Administration gifted us with an enormous body of incidents we could be talking about here. But, the guy still has a solid base of more than 70 million supporters. And one primary reason is that they fell for his two core, foundational uber-lies:
He's a (to use his term) "super-genius" who graduated atop his class at the Wharton School of Business
He's a wildly successful businessman who got his start via a $1 million loan from his father.
Those are both obscene lies. They are very far from the from the truth. So it's worth harping on them again. (We elaborated on that second one recently. Depending on how you count it, he received/pilfered over $1 billion, not $1 million. So today this is about his Wharton / "genius" lie.)
Trump claims he graduated first in his class at Wharton (Penn). He brags he's a “very stable genius.” And he has a “high IQ.” But OTDI 2017, the words of one of his Wharton professors haunted him from beyond the grave.
The late professor of marketing William T. Kelley had interacted with a young Donald, according to Frank DiPrima a close friend. “Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had,'” wrote DiPrima. "I remember the inflection of his voice when he said it...'Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!'
But wait, there's more. Not only did Trump obviously not graduate first in class, he didn't even appear on the honor roll, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported.
His classmates didn’t think much of him either. The DP quotes one as remembering “Don ... was loath to really study much.” And another recalled that Trump did not “seem to care about being prepared” for study groups.
But presumably he has to be pretty remarkable if he got into Penn, right? Well, it turns out he didn't get in when he was in high school, and only managed to get in later via unusual assistance. That came at a time when roughly 40% of all applicants there were accepted.
Trump's innate stupidity has, of course, also been recognized in his political career, as we've discussed in previous OTDIs. When he was just a businessman stomping on others, Trump was fighting against those who couldn't fight back. But as a politician, he revealed his true self to many people who had their own megaphones and weren't afraid to use them. So, the people who know Trump best call him Stupid. Or a F*cking Moron. Or an Idiot. Or an Idiot Surrounded by Clowns.
It's oft-noted that Trump likes to "project" his own failings onto others. The more intensely he accuses somebody of failing at something, the deeper he fails at it himself. For example, he rants that the "Biden Crime Family" received money from China. In this "scandal" last year, the GOP screamed that Joe had received $40,000 in "laundered" money from China before becoming president. Meanwhile, members of the Trump Family and their companies have received literally countless billions of dollars from foreign governments, both during and after Donald's presidency.
So the next time you hear Donald say Kamala Harris is "as low-IQ as Joe Biden" or "mentally disabled" or that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way,” you'll know he's likely talking about his self-perception.
Same with Trump's college failings. As far back as 2011 Trump was bashing Obama's academic success and questioning his transcripts. "I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump asked. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records." Obama, of course, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, and was the first Black leader of their Law Review, an immensely prestigious position.
This 2012 puffery from Michael Cohen (yes, that Michael Cohen) is remarkable, given what has taken place since then: "I tell you what, he'll provide (his college transcripts) to you when you provide yours to him," Michael Cohen, executive vice president at the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump, told the Guardian. "But what's your point? Mr. Trump's not the president of the United States and he's not running for the presidency."
As president, of course, Trump promised to sue anybody who releases his transcripts.
So, the Hill's headline here is pithy: "Trump’s obsession with Harris’s IQ is telling." But the piece itself, by Cornell professor Glenn Altschuler, is an excellent summary of some of Trump's mental defects, and we encourage you to read it in full.
Note, though, we're only talking here about his stupidity. We haven't even gotten into his psychiatric woes, like his family members -- and so many others -- have done:
His niece: "Donald's pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he'll never sit for."
His nephew: Donald is "atomic crazy"
His sister: "His goddamned...lying, oh my God...The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”
And we haven’t gotten into the mental decline he’s been showing on the campaign trail this month, with his 40-minute dance set, his 30-second freeze, his meandering speeches, or his inability to answer simple questions. "You would be worried if your Grandpa was acting like this," Obama said yesterday.
Btw, it's hard to show ALL of those assessments to you...because they keep rolling in.
Yesterday, historian Heather Cox Richardson noted that Trump “has lost all mental guardrails.”
And earlier this week, we heard from Mitch McConnell. He lands on "stupid" in his evaluation of Donald Trump. Not very imaginative. But, he does come up with a new one when he adds that Donald is also "a despicable human being," so credit to Mitch for his slightly different take.
Dive Deeper
“Dumbest student,” as told by Study International
Frank DiPrima’s story in The Daily Kos
Trump’s name not on honor roll at Wharton, reports The Daily Pennsylvanian
On This Day In The Trump Administration: Trump the Dumbest