Milbank: Maybe Trump proved his point about our intelligence
By Dana Milbank
Published: July 21, 2018, 6:01am
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My fellow Americans, we are a deeply stupid nation.
I know this must be the case because President Trump has repeatedly informed us that we are a “stupid country” — he offered this opinion on at least nine occasions since he launched his campaign for the presidency — and he should know. As he reminded us after his NATO meeting last week, he is a “very stable genius.”
It is furthermore the president’s highly intelligent opinion we have been led by “stupid people” and “our laws are so corrupt and stupid.” We have been stupid about trade. We have been stupid in dealing with Iraq, Iran, China, Mexico, Canada, Europe and Muslims. We have the “dumbest” immigration laws. Among the many stupid things Trump has identified: White House staffers, the FBI, the National Football League, Democrats, the filibuster and journalists.
“We’re so stupid!” Trump said to a group of donors recently. They laughed.
“You feel like sort of stupid, don’t you?” Trump asked a rally of supporters recently. “Don’t you feel stupid?”
Stoo-pid! Stoo-pid!
But we are at our most imbecilic when dealing with Russia. “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity,” he tweeted before meeting Monday in Helsinki with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs retweeted Trump’s assessment of his own country’s stupidity, tacking on the words “We agree.”
In his news conference a few hours later with Putin, Trump again raised the flag of American feeblemindedness. “The United States has been foolish,” he said.
How foolish are we?
We brainlessly criticized Russia when it invaded Georgia and Ukraine. We idiotically protested when Russia poisoned people in Britain. Like dunces, we punished Russians for killing human rights activists. Morons that we are, we complained when Russia shot down a passenger jet. And then, revealing ourselves to be truly daft and inane, we blamed Russia for interfering in our election.
Standing at Putin’s side Monday, Trump let the world know just how doltish the people are who made this judgment, including the cretins at the CIA and the nitwits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia,” Trump announced. “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia.
Trump, an aficionado of intelligence, likely sides with Putin because Putin is “very smart” in Trump’s estimation (though not a “smart cookie” like Kim Jong Un), while he regards American intelligence as unintelligent. Trump long ago dismissed the CIA as the numbskulls “who said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.”
Stupid is as stupid does
And the CIA’s ignorance is as nothing compared with the ignoramus Robert S. Mueller III and his special counsel investigation (“we have this stupidity going on — pure stupidity,” Trump said in Britain), which on July 13 indicted 12 Russians in the hack of the Democratic National Committee. The dunces of the DNC “should be ashamed of themselves” for being hacked, Trump said.
Likewise, many a low-IQ individual cringed at Trump’s performance in Helsinki: deferential to the Russian dictator, believing Putin over the U.S. government and boasting (with an incorrect figure) about his electoral college victory. But they are stupid if they can’t see Russia did not help Trump win. “We ran a brilliant campaign, and that’s why I’m president,” Trump said.
If Trump is right — and he is so smart that he must be — then this could mean Americans wanted exactly what they are getting right now: a president who burns alliances, insults allies, sides with Putin over the American government, ignores Russia’s abuses and bashes the free press across Europe.
If so, if we Americans really did want this, Trump has proved his point about our intelligence.
As a wise man once said: Stupid is as stupid does.
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