President Donald Trump’s veteran biographer says President Donald Trump is a man with questionable intelligence. But because he also has an extremely sound sense of insecurity and still wants to be the smartest person in the room, that means weeding out the people with higher I.Q.s.
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“He’s filled the administration of the second term with unqualified people, morons of one variety or another, because he can’t have people who are clearly smarter than he is,” said Michael Wolff a veteran reporter and author best known for his extensive coverage of Trump’s political career, including a series of books about his rocky first term.
In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, “Inside Trump’s Head,” he and co-host Joanna Coles discussed exactly why Trump appears to be surrounded by a mile-thick throng of idiots. According to Wolff, it’s all a matter of appearance and control.
“Trump learned from his first term that even tenuously competent officials might challenge him — or decide they were smarter than he was. (It’s a constant source of paranoia for the president.) So, this time around, he’s stacked the deck with dummies, and is surrounding himself with people whose main qualification is loyalty. The result is an administration in which almost no one is willing to tell him he’s wrong,” said Wolff.
“People have a very hard time understanding the full sense of a man who is the president of the United States who is — as he’s said about so many other people — as dumb as a brick himself,” said Wolff.
But then you must couple that with the fact that Trump also doesn’t have anyone else around him who might think independently and have the wherewithal to deal with the kind of high-capacity problems that typically assault a presidency, Wolff said.
“He can’t have people who’s smarter than he is, who — as they did in his first administration —went around saying what an idiot he is,” Wolff confessed to Coles.
Look no further than Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as example of a knuckle-dragging imbecile who makes even someone of Trump’s low caliber feel smart. Hegseth, said Wolff, arrived at the Pentagon “wildly underqualified, and his own insecurity is exactly what makes him the ideal Secretary for Trump.”
“Donald Trump’s interest in Pete Hegseth is that he is a groveler and a flatterer,” said Wolff. “Actually, during the first administration, many people at Fox News were intent upon sucking up to Donald Trump. You only got ratings during that period if you had a relationship with Donald Trump. But Pete Hegseth was looked at within the White House as the most hopelessly shameless person. He was a joke during the first administration, but not to Donald Trump. He told Trump exactly what he wanted to hear, and then shared war stories with him. And that’s the moment in which they bonded. That’s what catapulted him into this wholly unlikely position of being the Secretary of Defense.”
President Donald Trump’s veteran biographer says President Donald Trump is a man with questionable intelligence. But because he also has an extremely sound sense of insecurity and still wants to be the smartest person in the room, that means weeding out the people with higher I.Q.s.
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“He’s filled the administration of the second term with unqualified people, morons of one variety or another, because he can’t have people who are clearly smarter than he is,” said Michael Wolff a veteran reporter and author best known for his extensive coverage of Trump’s political career, including a series of books about his rocky first term.
In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, “Inside Trump’s Head,” he and co-host Joanna Coles discussed exactly why Trump appears to be surrounded by a mile-thick throng of idiots. According to Wolff, it’s all a matter of appearance and control.
“Trump learned from his first term that even tenuously competent officials might challenge him — or decide they were smarter than he was. (It’s a constant source of paranoia for the president.) So, this time around, he’s stacked the deck with dummies, and is surrounding himself with people whose main qualification is loyalty. The result is an administration in which almost no one is willing to tell him he’s wrong,” said Wolff.
“People have a very hard time understanding the full sense of a man who is the president of the United States who is — as he’s said about so many other people — as dumb as a brick himself,” said Wolff.
But then you must couple that with the fact that Trump also doesn’t have anyone else around him who might think independently and have the wherewithal to deal with the kind of high-capacity problems that typically assault a presidency, Wolff said.
“He can’t have people who’s smarter than he is, who — as they did in his first administration —went around saying what an idiot he is,” Wolff confessed to Coles.
Look no further than Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as example of a knuckle-dragging imbecile who makes even someone of Trump’s low caliber feel smart. Hegseth, said Wolff, arrived at the Pentagon “wildly underqualified, and his own insecurity is exactly what makes him the ideal Secretary for Trump.”
“Donald Trump’s interest in Pete Hegseth is that he is a groveler and a flatterer,” said Wolff. “Actually, during the first administration, many people at Fox News were intent upon sucking up to Donald Trump. You only got ratings during that period if you had a relationship with Donald Trump. But Pete Hegseth was looked at within the White House as the most hopelessly shameless person. He was a joke during the first administration, but not to Donald Trump. He told Trump exactly what he wanted to hear, and then shared war stories with him. And that’s the moment in which they bonded. That’s what catapulted him into this wholly unlikely position of being the Secretary of Defense.”
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