Do people actually think that Trump is an idiot?

Not the people who elected him and whose numbers are growing as we speak!

I may call him an idiot,but he really isn’t.
He is a true bully, ridiculously thin skinned ( can’t take criticism ).
Has the diplomacy of a wounded bull in a china shop.
He is a bad liar, a cheat, a hot head, an ego maniac, but NOT an idiot.

Yes, in the sense of the word idiot that means ”a foolish or stupid person ”.

(I am sure that few if any people who label Trump an idiot are meaning by that, that if evaluated by an IQ test that he would necessarily score under 70.)

I think he is foolish in many ways, particularly as assessed from my own values. I think he’s stupid in many ways, as well. Perhaps he is not as stupid as he sometimes seems, and perhaps from some (venal, selfish, destructive, terrible, corrupt, disgusting, sociopathic) perspectives, he’s not so foolish.

He’s not literally an idiot, but he is completely out of his depth in his job and I find it a bit worrying that many millions of people haven’t realised that.

He reminds me of my sister’s father-in-law, who believed you could only learn so much, so he only learned about his business.
JFK said he grew and learned throughout his presidency.
Truman said “It’s what you learn after you know everything that’s important”.
Bill Clinton said no one can be fully prepared for the job as President.

Trump doesn’t seem to even try to learn or grow.
He’s putting the nation at risk.
That makes him an idiot in my book.

Figuratively speaking, yes.

Yes.

He’s certainly no genius. The guy went bankrupt 6 times…

I think those were planned bankruptcies I mean declare bankruptcy and get out of paying your workers, and bills then buy the project back for pennies on the dollar, yeah this guy is all for the working class.

Other idiots don’t seem to notice.

It seems like he has poor emotional intelligence. And he seems unable to do any self reflection.

Using the word idiot to describe someone who has a learning disability is archaic and no longer acceptable.

(Although several us states still use the term in their statutes. Probably the same states that were so keen on eugenics)
Inciden

No, nobody thinks he is literally an idiot. That is not how the term is usually used. To add to what others have said, Trump by his own admission does not read. The time that he spends glued to the TV is time that other presidents spent reading. I wonder what might be included in a future presidential library. If they confine themselves to books Trump has actually read, the only volume in it may be Fun with Dick and Jane.

I’ve always regarded him as an idiot and a sleazebag ever since I first started seeing him on TV back in the late 80’s.

I’m not a Trump defender.

Trump is a lot of negative things but far from being an idiot.

Trump acts the way he does because it works for him. And he is brilliant at it. He has out maneuvered the brightest most talented politicians in the USA. How can an idiot do that?

A lot of people hate Trump so much that they lower themselves to his level and start the name calling. It’s a mistake to go to Trump’s arena where he is master.

Sure, he’s out maneuvered them in the way that a bull out maneuvers the shelving in a china shop.

Only the idiots.

I don’t think he is an idiot. He can definitely fool people to get elected as the president. He has to be a genius in disguise, but a destructive one. People need to smarten up by not giving him a second term.

For those saying “no one thinks he’s an idiot, ” please stop. You don’t speak for me. I don’t use the term lightly. I think of Trump, as an “idiot.” Most of his followers, are worse….

No, that is just shorthand for what I really want to say.

I don’t think he’s an idiot at all, but I think he’s fooled quite a few people into underestimating his intelligence while they focus on tweets, Stormy, etc…

Remember how much Bush was mocked while in office, and just a month ago people here on fluther were saying they actually started to miss him, and some of the good things he did! A Republican! True story….

Of course he is not an idiot in the true sense of the word. He is very intelligent but I think his charisma has been overlooked. You can go very far in this world with charisma.
He’s not boring at all. A lot of people love being carried away by his words to the point of wanting to vote for him. Joe Biden does not have this quality. lol

@KNOWITALL ”...they actually started to miss him, and some of the good things [George Bush] did…”

Yeah he’s a real shining fucking star. A war criminal who single-handedly managed to turn a huge fiscal surplus into the largest deficit the US had ever seen. He started at least 1 unnecessary war, and destabilized the Middle East. He pissed away trillions of dollars. Oh, and his deregulation of Wall Street helped lead to the collapse of the entire market which the taxpayers had to bail out. Like I said, a real shining fucking star…

@Aster I’m not sure if being grabbed by the pussy is considered charismatic where you come from? It certainly would get your attention I would imagine.

Trump is probably quite intelligent. I think he utilizes that intelligence to compensate for his other deficits which are stark and rather profound. In dealing with the world, it’s difficult to avoid the convenient mistake of conflating ignorance with stupidity. People assume when I call the man a moron, I mean that he’s stupid. But it’s a difficulty inherent in our language. What would you call a smart man who knows so little? Or better yet, how does a man of privilege with a fine education emerge from the process with so little knowledge of his country or its government? And for all of you who prefer to defend the man, I have this to say: Don’t conflate criticism of the dummy with hatred. The criticisms are valid and I assume you know it, because if you don’t—what does that say about your own intelligence?

@gorillapaws Look up the thread and tell the posters then, it’s not my deal.

@gorillapaws – @KNOWITALL is technically correct. I remember seeing this. It’s common for centrists to now like monsters like GW Bush, because they don’t actually care about policy.

I think he is quite stupid. . However, he’s had an entourage surrounding him all of this life to protect him, and his Daddy to pay his way through school, with the promise of good grades for money.
His writing says it all to me. Any spark of intelligence would show in his writing

@LostInParadise I literally think he’s an idiot.

it isn’t a matter of liking Bush. It’s the contrast when the proof of the axiom “it could always be worse” is paraded before your eyes.

@Dutchess_III he has speech writers.

Not for his tweets he doesn’t @Aster. His tweets are ALL him. And he is an idiot.

@stanleybmanly Well yes, but regardless he was mocked continually as one of the dumbest politicians to take office. His jokes, his stuttering, his verbal faux pas…if you liked the guy, you were just as ignorant as a Trump lover today. Thus the irony.

@Dutchess_III that’s true. HIs tweets are all him. But he’ll never cower in a corner and give in; he will continue to answer back, be aggressive , brag about his talents and get things done. Sure, he will make mistakes. They all did. But the election results will say a lot about how popular he really is.

He’s an idiot, a bully, plain and simple, who has no idea what he’s talking about most of the time, and whatever it is he sure as hell can’t spell it!

@Aster “But the election results will say a lot about how popular he really is.”

So, not very.

Not sure how the dictionary defines the word “idiot.”

Personally I use it in anger to call someone who is supposedly capable of rational thinking but willingly ignores facts for whatever reason.

Agree with @mazingerz88 . If I thought he had a low IQ and was not doing it out of spite I would call him an imbecile. As it is, Idiot will do for the nonce.

Tillerson called him a “moron” and was sacked a few months later. Tillerson also said this:

“A responsibility of every American citizen to each other is to preserve and protect our freedom by recognizing what truth is and is not, what a fact is and is not and begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness and demand our pursuit of America’s future be fact-based—not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises, but with a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are, and guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges.”

I’m sorry. People are missing Bush. Yeah. That shows much more about Trump, than Bush.

The main difference, is most of us know Bush meant well, but was manipulated by Chaney. Bush pretty much admits it now.
Trump rapes others with some understanding of what he’s doing.

PLEASE. Don’t dare take it as a change of heart. Just a change of idiots…

With what I have seen he is doing with Trade with other countries, I change my view, he is not only an Idiot but a FUCKING IDIOT.
He is going to cost the US a great deal of jobs, with his trade policies, but please don’t take my word for it just sit back and let the shit show begin.

@MrGrimm888 I never thought it was a change of heart, it’s just amusing to see the vitriol change into warm fuzzy memories.

Bush was just so…incompetent, but, @MrGrimm888, he meant well. He was also willing to listen to advisors.
Trump is an idiotic loose cannon.

@KNOWITALL . Imagine you had a tumor on your neck, about the size of a quarter.

Over the years, it becomes the size of a watermelon, and is ruining your life.

You may ,at that point, long for the days it was just going to kill you, not ruin your life and kill you…

That’s how warm and fuzzy the nostalgia is…