What If Donald Is Not 'Dumbing Down' and Actually Is This Dumb?

Not that we needed scientific confirmation — Trump’s over-simplicity is obvious. Just consider his signature issue: “Let’s build a wall to keep out the bad guys.” While this may make sense to some fourth-graders, it makes no sense to sophisticated adults.

Or consider another Trump doozy: “Let’s ban all Muslims from entering America.” Some fourth-graders might think this is logical, but serious adults know it is ludicrous.

The examples of Trump’s childish simplicities and outright idiocy go on and on. Think about his statements like, “We should have taken the oil in Iraq,” or “We should impose a 45 percent tariff on China,” or “We should default on the U.S. debt and renegotiate it.” These might all make sense to a fourth-grader on a very surface level, but in real life they would all lead to disastrous consequences for the nation.

And as we know all too well, Trump is fond of a highly juvenile form of communication that is riddled with profanity and insults, including calling people “loser,” “stupid,” “fat pig,” “moron” and the like.

So what is Trump up to here in dumbing down his messages? Well, the conventional wisdom holds that there is method in his madness. And indeed, exploiting the “poorly educated” may be a rational political strategy because of how many of them there are. That is, of course, if you have no problem ignoring the deplorable lack of ethics in exploiting other people.

The vast majority of Americans, approximately 70 percent, possess an intelligence level of only average or below, which is roughly at or below a high-school level. Only 10 percent of the population is regarded as superior or above. So Trump’s strategy seems apparent: Aim low to capture more people.

But perhaps the conventional wisdom about Trump is wrong. Perhaps Trump is not in fact exploiting people of low intelligence, but rather a single person of low intelligence: himself. Perhaps Trump is, in fact, one of them. Perhaps Trump possesses a very low level of intelligence himself.

Actually, this makes a lot of sense. If Trump were a person of high intelligence who was only playacting to appeal to voters of low intelligence, he would still be able to communicate at a higher level as well. But Trump has never been able to communicate at a sophisticated level.

Trump’s inadequacies were on full display during his first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton. Trump was a disaster. He failed to articulate coherent answers to many of the most obvious questions. He was unable to defend against Clinton’s anticipated assertions. And he simply could not execute the most basic debating skills of quickly answering questions about his weaknesses and then pivoting to strengths. Plus, he was like a child who could not control himself from fidgeting, making silly faces, shouting, and constantly interrupting.