President Trump is probably the most successful debater in this country since [the] Lincoln-Douglas [debates of 1858]
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. July 14, 2023
One of the storylines that the Democrat “News”-media Colluders (hereafter the DNC) came up with to smear him is that Donald Trump is not very intelligent. This is contradicted by a 2006 study conducted by the University of California at Davis psychologist Dean Keith Simonton, using a historiometric method that concluded that his IQ is 156, well above the common view that an IQ of 140 qualifies as genius. When Trump ran as a Republican for the presidency a flock of partisans argued that it is incorrect, e.g., the left-biased “fact checker” Snopes rates Prof. Simonton’s claim as “false,” an “analysis” to which we return later.
It must be remembered, first, that this kind of attack on Republican presidential candidates is standard DNC strategy. Whereas they always see their own candidates as unimaginably brilliant they openly wonder how the peasants in flyover country could vote for those dumb Republicans, e.g., Slate magazine gloats about “the stupidity of Ronald Reagan.” In fact, a 2001 Gallup poll of Americans named Reagan, followed closely by Abraham Lincoln, as the greatest president of all time. Not bad for a dummy! It is astonishing that someone so stupid fooled so many Americans that he had such a successful presidency!
Similarly, NBC reported in 2004 that whereas George Bush was seen by voters as decisive, John Kerry was seen as “smart”. In fact, George Bush and John Kerry were together at Yale where neither were academic standouts but Bush slightly beat out Kerry in the class average. The feminist Jezebel magazine is somewhat less delicate but more revealing about itself in its instruction to “F— George Bush and his stupid cat paintings.”
Walter Cronkite once famously claimed that Jimmy Carter is the smartest president. Of course, Cronkite, himself a college dropout from the University of Texas, had no evidence whatsoever for this claim but as a “Liberal media icon” felt entitled to promote his fantasies.
More recently, fanboy “presidential historian” with no history degree Michael Beschloss declared that Barak Obama had the highest IQ of any president, once again, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever and certainly untrue. On the bright side, Beschloss’ groveling was guaranteed to ingratiate him with the Obama administration and the DNC.
The estimate of Donald Trump’s IQ as 156 was, by contrast, not simply dreamed up out of thin air by some shameless partisan hack. It was calculated by A University of California psychologist who has written 13 books on intelligence measurement published by Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge and other university presses. Imagine that! Someone who actually knows something for a change! How refreshing!
Unfortunately for dreamy liberals, Snopes gives no argument that it is false that Trump’s IQ is 156. They might be construed as giving an argument that his IQ may not be that high but no argument that this is definitely false. Astonishingly, Snopes does not even address Professor Simonton’s historiometric analysis but falls back on the claim that since Trump’s transcripts and SAT scores at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) are not available it is impossible to estimate his IQ! But Prof. Simonton’s analysis was, as Snopes itself points out, based on looking at the “variables having known correlations with IQ such as highest level of education, academic honors, scores on college admissions exams and preferences.”
Equally astonishingly, Snopes argues that Trump’s IQ is not 156 because Wharton’s SAT requirements are currently set at 1500. This roughly translates to an IQ score between 145 and 149, not 156. [But this is] irrelevant [because] Trump transferred there his junior year, and Wharton does not list SAT scores among its requirements for transfer students.
Is this argument supposed to be that Penn accepted a transfer student from Fordham who fell below their standards? Naturally, Snopes gives no evidence for that. Further, as a transfer from Fordham, Penn had additional information about Trump, not merely about him as a high school student but as a successful university-level student, when they accepted him. Duh!
Further, Snopes did not even bother to address the evaluation, based on scientific (historiometric) methods by one of the acknowledged psychological experts in the field, Prof. Simonton. But that is where the claim that Trump’s IQ is 156 originated! It was not created out of thin air like Cronkite’s claim that Jimmy Carter is the smartest president ever or fanboy Beschloss’ evidence-free claim that Barak Obama’s IQ is the highest of any president!
Trump’s son Barron’s IQ has apparently been measured at 146. He obviously did not get it from Joe Biden, who, after repeatedly lying that he graduated in the top half of his law school class, actually graduated 76th in a class of 85 (the bottom 11%), not from an Ivy League University but from the University of Delaware.
Recall also that Trump came to prominence in 1980 when the incompetent NYC government, with all of its resources, could not get the Wollman Ice Rink built on time or on budget. After Trump dared them to let him do it, Mayor Koch gave him the keys and Trump got it built on time and under budget while all the self-appointed geniuses sulked.
The DNC’s urgent need to concoct transparently weak arguments to diminish Trump’s possible IQ derives from the fact that their egos cannot bear to see themselves beaten by people (like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Jr. and Donald Trump himself who kicked their butts in elections) that they see as so much inferior to themselves? Perhaps the proper conclusion is that Snopes’ collective IQ is not very high.
Although we don’t know whether Trump has an IQ of 156 it is clearly very high (higher than many of his lightweight critics). Sorry but that is obvious. Nor does one need an IQ test to determine this. When Trump left the presidency inflation was 1.4 %. He got Kim Jong Il to agree in principle to nuclear disarmament of the Korean peninsula (after all the geniuses fretted that Trump’s methods were dangerous). Worldhistoryedu.com admits that Trump enacted tax cuts and the Jobs Act of 2017, “median household income steadily increased during his tenure, unemployment fell to a 49-year low, the use of food stamps declined, several important trade deals to benefit the US were signed, major judicial confirmations were made, several terrorist organizations and leaders were neutralized, America’s energy future was strengthened, US military spending increased, the Space Force was created, and, what galls the DNC the most, Trump presided over low unemployment among African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians (some racist!). Trump also negotiated the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab countries (which Biden foolishly rejected). Finally, the claim that someone who built a multi-billion-dollar empire in the cutthroat New York construction industry is unintelligent is literally silly (but typical of the DNC). It would be amusing to watch his Lilliputian critics try to repeat that. Contrast Trump’s record with the unmitigated disaster of the Biden presidency!
The DNC and “swampier” parts of the Republican Party oppose Trump, not because he failed but because he succeeded. Since they cannot challenge his presidential record, they resort to ad hominem smears. They would clearly rather indict him than debate him.
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