'Dumbest person in the world': Trump’s 'intellectual limitations' driving reckless policy

U.S. President Donald Trump at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, U.S., March 18, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper

During George W. Bush's presidency, some paleoconservative and America First critics of the Iraq War blamed "overeducated intellectuals" and "pseudo-intellectuals" for the many problems that post-Saddam Hussein Iraq was having. Bush, as they saw it, pursued a disastrous foreign policy because he listened to neocons who had a lot of education but not a lot of common sense.

But The New Republic's Jason Linkins has a much different type of war-related argument in an article published on March 20. Linkins is highly critical of President Donald Trump's war against Iran, and he argues that a lack of intellectual depth is the problem.

"So maybe this is the best time to assert the obvious, using my favored rubric of Trump analysis: Imagine if the dumbest person in the world and humanity's biggest a–– were the same person, and that guy was president," Linkins writes. "Then imagine he started a war with Iran. Now check the news. One look, and here's what you should be thinking: 'Yep, that tracks.' As with all of Trump's presidential exploits, success is always constrained by two factors: the aforementioned sharp limitations of his intellectual capabilities and the fact that he is perpetually surrounded by an inner circle made up of clowns somewhere on the spectrum between 'rampantly evil' and 'thoroughgoing d––.'"

Linkins predicts that with the Iran war not going well, there will be a lot of "think pieces purporting to explain how this happened." But according to the New Republic journalist, the main factor in Trump's bad foreign policy decisions — including alienating longtime European allies — is his lack of intellectual depth.

"Trump is really going through it with the nations that were once, putatively, our allies before Trump launched a trade war with all of them and threatened to seize Greenland in an act of colonial conquest," Linkins argues. "In the space of days, Trump has gone from begging for European naval support to free the Strait of Hormuz to having those requests punted back in his face to spiraling out on Truth Social about how he didn't actually need anyone's help in the first place. Since then, he's petulantly suggested that he might wreck the whole shop and leave the nations that rebuffed him to clean up the mess."

Linkins adds, "Meanwhile, countries like France and Italy are simply working on side deals with Iran to be allowed to use the Strait (of Hormuz)."

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