Very Stable Genius

🚨 Van Jones DROPS A TRUTH BOMB: “Guys, can we cut it out? Donald Trump is not an idiot… Donald Trump is smarter than me, you, and all the critics… this dude is a phenomenal—he is the most powerful human on earth.” 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/dUAKvYUMGm

— TRUMP ARMY (@TRUMP_ARMY_) May 18, 2025

I think we're at the beginning of a remarkable reappraisal of Donald Trump, although there's been a fairly consistent minority opinion that Trump is a "genius" since his first term. I asked, the web, "Is Trunp smart?" It returned, among others, this link at Politico from 2020:

What we learned from Trump’s taxes does suggest he possesses an astonishing gift which could reasonably be called “genius” — if you accept that as a descriptive word rather than a term of praise.

Genius, in this context, means something more than “very smart.” It means an ability to see connections and possibilities in circumstances that even people who are smart in conventional ways do not see. There are some people who possess genius of a certain type in certain arenas who might actually qualify as kind of dumb when it comes to more conventional intelligence of the sort measured in conventional arenas.

Trump’s genius, as illuminated by the Times, isn’t simply for self-promotion but for harnessing self-promotion to a coherent and comprehensive strategy for personal gain. . . . It is a simple fact that in this intersection of self-promotion, self-enrichment, and self-protection Trump has a mind that operates at a different level than most, and he has used it to fashion a historic career.

But from The New Republic the same year:

From the earliest days of his administration, it has been obvious to everyone who has come in direct contact with him that Trump knows very, very little about any policy issue or even how the federal government operates. Among those most alarmed by Trump’s ignorance and incompetence were those in the military and intelligence community. After a National Security Council meeting on January 19, 2018, Defense Secretary James Mattis told aides that Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader.”

. . . Trump’s mental failings are also painfully clear to foreign diplomats, who are professionally obligated to be frank and clear-eyed about him. Among themselves, diplomats early on shared tips on meeting with Trump: Don’t assume he knows anything about your country, flatter his ego, and be mindful of his extremely short attention span.

. . . In July 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a “moron” for his bungling and incompetence. That same month, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly dismissed Trump as an “idiot” and a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner” at a private dinner. In 2018, White House chief of staff John Kelly called Trump “an idiot” on several occasions. A long list of other close Trump advisers have also disparaged his intelligence.

So is Trump basically just a successful narcissist? The problem is that narcissists wear out their welcome:

[Researchers] did a survey of people asking them what behaviors they believed increase their status in a group. People who scored low on the [ Narcissism Personality Inventory] tended to list behaviors in which they treated other people nicely. People who scored high on the NPI tended to list behaviors that got them noticed like being arrogant or pointing out other people’s weaknesses. These more aggressive behaviors may in fact bring people status in the short-term, but that status tends to erode over the long-term.

This pattern may be one reason why narcissists often move from one group to another in organizations. They can make themselves noticed quickly, but their behavior leads them to wear out their welcome quickly. And because narcissists are sensitive to when their status is declining, they can recognize when it is time to find a new group.

On one hand, Trump certainly displays behaviors like being arrogant or pointing out other people’s weaknesses. On the other, particularly after comparing Trump to Biden, the electorate appears to have decided it could live with this, and it reelected him. In fact, there seems to be an emerging consensus that Trump has a unique talent for "harnessing self-promotion to a coherent and comprehensive strategy for personal gain", if in fact personal gain is his objective.

Let's take the case of his post-election bromance with Elon Musk, currently the richest man in the world. Mostly at Trump's instigation, Musk donated something like $277 million to his and other Republicans' 2024 campaigns, and apparently as a reward, he spent some weeks in Trump's close company at Mar-a-Lago and the White House. But when it mattered, Trump didn't give him the one big thing he wanted, continuation of electric vehicle subsidies, saying simply that his position against them was well known from the start.

I can only see this as extremely skillful manipulation, and it's almost amusing to see Musk belatedly waking up to the recognition that he's been used. And in fact, Tim Walz's chracterization of Musk, “Look, Elon’s on that stage, jumping around skipping like a dipshit", wasn't far off the mark. Trump set Musk up for this, letting him get carried away with his own ego, in return for a quarter billion dollars, and all he got was the oppurtunity to jump around on a stage. His boards aren't as impressed.

The interpersonal insight Trump is displaying in this episode alone is something unprecedented. The Trump-as-narcissist narrative is going to have to be dropped.