this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2026
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Its said he used to be quite charming and manipulative, so its not really stupidity. I think he may have a personality disorder. His choices often aren’t contemplated, but rash and emotional.
There’s also a pattern to his actions. Absolutely none of his decisions seem to be governed by empathy, morality, ideology, strategic national interests or even long term personal interests. Instead, nearly all his actions seem impulsive and emotional, aimed at satisfying his short term personal need for gratification, admiration or payback.
His frequent tantrums, his impulsive decision making, his inability to maintain composure, his inability to maintain professional relationships, together they all point to some sort of mental illness.
You think so, huh? What tipped you off?
may have? My brother in christ, everybody already knows he has a pretty strong case of narcissistic personality disorder.
I've known someone else a bit like this, where he seemed "stupid" - found it very difficult to learn traditional academic subjects - but he was top notch at manipulation, and had an uncanny knack for guessing what people wanted in any given scenario.
You can't be truly dumb and successfully manipulate the majority of people you meet. Put another way, people who are as limited as he seems - find it very difficult to understand people and get what they want/need from them.
Didn't one of his former teachers call him the dumbest student he'd ever taught? Yes he's good at manipulation but he quite literally hasn't got any kind of a objective.
Children learn about the concept of delayed gratification by about five, it looks like trump never met this developmental milestone.
This doesn't contradict what I'm saying, but maybe you didn't intend to. The person I knew well and was describing would be described even worse by his own teachers - in fact his teachers insisted he go into classes catering to kids with severe learning disabilities. Which he was beaten for at home, and caused him huge unanswered shame.
But again, he could basically instantly understand the motivations of a room full of strangers, it was uncanny. Even other people I know who are good at it, not like this. And he would get bored and put people in weird situations to entertain himself, using this power. They never saw what he was doing.
Trump is fucking horrible at almost everything. He's not quite dumb though, really clearly not. He's unable and unwilling to direct his mind toward anything other than a specific narrow set of goals, and this person I knew was exactly that way.
But pursuit of one of his goals? He'd fucking get there. He would get there. And it was sometimes horrifying, and often base and mean, but it could just be a lot of egregious flattery too - whatever the situation called for. Scary stuff.