Windsor Mann

Sometimes it’s worth remembering that our current president is not smart. Sometimes — oftentimes — he reminds us.

In an interview with the Associated Press released on Sunday, President Trump said things that would embarrass most GED applicants. He said “super-duper” when discussing border security. He also said “impalatable,” a word that doesn’t exist.

Asked what his transition from business to government has been like, Trump said, “You have to love people. And if you love people, such a big responsibility. [Unintelligible] You can take any single thing, including even taxes. I mean we’re going to be doing major tax reform. Here’s part of your story, it’s going to be a big [unintelligible]…. I’ll tell you the other thing is [unintelligible] … [unintelligible].”

Sixteen times, the AP recorded a Trump remark as “unintelligible.”

Trump, discussing NATO, said, “Back when they did NATO there was no such thing as terrorism.” He neglected to explain why the word “terrorism” existed when there was no such thing as terrorism.

Last year, Trump said NATO was obsolete because it didn’t deal with terrorism. At the time, NATO forces were in Afghanistan, the country that harbored al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that launched the 9/11 attacks. NATO was fighting terrorists when Trump said NATO didn’t fight terrorists.

But that was then. “Now I know a lot about NATO,” Trump said. At his next press conference, someone should ask him to name all 28 countries in NATO.

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In addition to flip-flopping on NATO, Trump has flip-flopped on whether to call China a currency manipulator. But this, you can be sure, is a sign of his intelligence. In his book Time to Get Tough, Trump says, “Smart people learn things, so they change their minds.” Inverting this syllogism, Trump thinks that because he’s changed his mind, this makes him smart.

Explaining his flip-flop on China, Trump said, “Things change. There has to be flexibility. Let me give you an example. President Xi, we have a, like, a really great relationship. For me to call him a currency manipulator and then say, ‘By the way, I’d like you to solve the North Korean problem,’ doesn’t work. So you have to have a certain flexibility, number one. Number two, from the time I took office till now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. It’s not like generalities. Do you want a Coke or anything?”

Sometimes Trump has serious points to make, as he does here, but he’s so inarticulate in making them that his points are beside the point. The focus instead is on whether you want a Coke or anything.

As a candidate, Trump promised to learn on the job. True to his word, Trump has learned. “I have learned one thing,” he told the AP, which sounds like a high estimate.

What has he learned?

“The one thing I’ve learned to do that I never thought I had the ability to do — I don’t watch CNN anymore.” Or MSNBC. “I never thought I had the ability to not watch.”

Rather than learning something about politics or policy, Trump learned something about himself — namely, that he has “the ability to not watch” things on TV he doesn’t want to watch, an ability that is exceptional only in North Korea.

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According to numerous reports, Trump watches a lot of cable news. Given that he doesn’t watch CNN or MSNBC, that leaves Fox News as his primary, perhaps only, supplier of information.

He also relies on his advisers, the ranks of which include his daughter, his son-in-law and Omarosa Manigault from The Apprentice. He likes his press secretary, Sean Spicer, because, Trump said, “That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.”

People watch Spicer’s press briefings as a guilty pleasure, because they want to see if and how this seemingly normal man can defend Trump’s incoherencies in a coherent way.

Trump has neither the knowledge nor the convictions to guide him through a coherent discussion. He possesses, instead, a compulsion to speak at length about virtually any topic. When he speaks at length, which is most of the time, he speaks incoherently. He speaks incoherently because he thinks incoherently.

If Trump were smart, he would keep his cognitive deficiencies under wraps and talk to the press only when necessary. He would speak to the public the way Stephen Hawking does — rarely, knowledgeably and without improvisation.

Windsor Mann is the editor ofThe Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism. Harass him on Twitter@WindsorMann.

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