In a series of social media posts in August, former President Donald Trump called Vice President Kamala Harris “low IQ,” “dumb” and lacking “the mental capacity” to debate him. Although a substantial majority of Americans subsequently concluded that she beat him in their Sept. 10 face-off, Trump doubled down. “Kamala Harris is mentally impaired,” he said at a rally in Wisconsin last month. “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.”
In contrast, Trump — who often boasts about his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, home of “super genius stuff” at the Wharton School, and the difficulty of getting admitted to that prestigious institution — maintains that “I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart.”
Trump did not graduate with honors from Penn. Nor has he authorized release of his college transcripts. And it wasn’t that difficult for a transfer student (in this case, from Fordham) to get in more than 50 years ago.
Innate and acquired intelligence is clearly not Trump’s long suit. He has demonstrated a staggering ignorance about American history. He has alleged that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer and that vaccines cause autism. He doesn’t understand that tariffs raise retail prices on imported goods, in essence imposing a national sales tax on all Americans, disproportionately affecting poor people and increasing inflation.
Trump’s public statements have also become increasingly incoherent. His explanation that he is not actually rambling (“You know, I swerve. You know what the swerve is. I’ll talk about like nine different things and they’ll come back brilliantly together, and it’s like friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen’”) does not pass the smell test.
Consider a few examples.
In January, in a speech about illegal drugs, Trump could not pronounce the word “smallest” and then said, “We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
At a rally in March, he complained about a photograph of President Biden in a bathing suit; made comments about Michael Jackson and Cary Grant (who, he pointed out, wouldn’t look good in a bathing suit at age 81, either) and bragged that women love him. “But it was an amazing phenomenon,” he continued, “and I do protect women. Look, they talk about suburban housewives. I believe I’m doing well — you know, the polls are rigged. Of course lately they haven’t been rigged because I’m winning by so much, so I don’t want to say it. Disregard that statement. I love the polls very much.”
Asked at the Economic Club of New York how he would reduce the cost of childcare and what specific legislation he’d propose on this subject, Trump replied: “Well, I would do that and we’re sitting down, you know, I was somebody, we have had Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue, but I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that, because, look childcare is childcare. It’s something you know you have to have it, in this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers we’re talking about, including childcare, that it’s going to take care. We’re gonna have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about in waste and fraud and all the other things that are going on in this country.”
Trump’s incoherence should give voters pause. Especially when they also consider his fundamental character flaws.
Insisting that he is “entitled to personal attacks,” Trump has mocked Biden’s childhood stutter. He has reposted crude and vulgar sexual comments about Harris. And he lies about all things great and small. The size of his crowds. Crime rates, inflation rates and the number of immigrants illegally entering the country. The result of the 2020 election. Teachers deciding whether transgender students should get operations. Haitian immigrants kidnapping, killing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
In selecting a president of the United States, the most powerful political figure in the world, knowledge, intelligence, cognitive acuity and character matter — more than anything else.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
