One of the highest
Trump apparently thinks “IQ” is a straightforward synonym for “intelligence.” He also apparently thinks he has lots of both.
In an interview with Forbes magazine published Tuesday morning, President Trump talks about his high IQ to explain away reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referred to him as a “moron” over the summer.
Said Trump: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
That’s funny, because pretty much everyone else in the world can tell you otherwise.
This is hardly the first time that Trump has cited his reportedly sky-high IQ — and the relatively low IQs of his political rivals — to make a point or win an argument. In fact, it’s one of his favorite pieces of rhetoric. Below are 22 times he’s brandished his IQ as a political weapon.
I know some of you may think l'm tough and harsh but actually I'm a very compassionate person (with a very high IQ) with strong common sense
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2013
It contradicts itself! An intelligent person wouldn’t post a tweet like that.
Also, I’ve seen few people in public life less compassionate than Donald Trump.
Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure,it's not your fault
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 9, 2013
Ha, no, again. We don’t know it and it isn’t true. He’s thick as a plank.
Trump both puts a lot of weight on IQ tests as an objective measure of intelligence (to which scientists probably would object) and believes that few, if any, people can match his own score. Trump uses his IQ like he uses his net worth: It’s always higher than you might assume and there’s no way to ever pin it down.
To pin it down, maybe, but to draw conclusions based on what we see and hear? There’s plenty of way to do that.
Like this for instance!
Rochester, N.Y., April 2016:
“In fact, this is the second record cold spell on the whole big section of the United States. It’s not just Rochester. The whole big section. It’s like record, record cold. And I keep hearing about global warming. Now they’ll say, ‘He doesn’t understand. This is a world-wide problem.’ Oh no, I don’t understand? Let’s do IQ tests.”
“Good Morning Britain,” May 2016:
PIERS MORGAN: Sadiq Khan is the first Muslim Mayor of London. He has attacked you for being ignorant. He says that if you’re president…
TRUMP: Let’s do an IQ test.
The evidence is in.
Two old jokes come to mind:
“I am not conceited, because that would be a fault, and I have no faults.”
“I am not conceited, although I have every reason to be.”
People claiming that they are perfect really annoy those of us who are.
One time I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken!
We should turn it into a mockery of the Birther thing: show us your (verified) IQ test result to prove you’re qualified to be president! Oh, and your tax returns.
The fact that IQ is pretty much irrelevant to anything other than as a vehicle for systemic racism is beside the point: there is NO WAY he’d be able to sit through a whole IQ test. The whole bottom 2/3 would just be doodles of missiles hitting North Korea and Trump driving really big trucks, possibly over protesters.
The only thing IQ tests measure is one’s ability to do IQ tests.
@Graham:
And the only person who doesn’t know that is Donald Trump
Man, don’t I wish that were true! I have a brother-in-law who waves his IQ around at anyone and everyone (and it’s risen exponentially over the years, after he discovered that all the members of his wife’s family have at least as high an IQ, so it had to get more bigly). He hasn’t done much with his intelligence, but mostly runs other people down as less smart.
I have a brother who has boasted about his IQ for years (news flash: my brother is just like Donald Trump in almost every way except wealth). My brother never managed to even so much as support himself, and spent a lot of his life living off wives (yes, more than one, but not at the same time) he disdained because they were learning disabled and had to work as waitresses to support him because they were not college capable.
I have a lot of people everywhere I go who think IQ is a very meaningful number, and will throw the concept around constantly, because it’s all sciency and psychology and stuff like that. Oh, and they will inform me that “black people really do have a lower IQ than white people” and “women really do have a lower IQ than men” and “that’s been scientifically proven. You can’t argue with scientifically proven facts”. Huh? Nope, I can argue with ignorance.
Sigh. Yeah, this is what I love about being a psychologist: everyone’s an expert, everyone knows how to do my job better than me. That 6 year university education was clearly just a waste of time and money. “black people really do have a lower IQ than white people” is a meaningless claim, not because IQ tests are worthless, but because if you try to measure differences between populations you have no idea what it is you’re measuring. “women really do have a lower IQ than men” no, they don’t. If your test shows a sex difference, it’s a shitty test. And claiming that someting is “scientifically proven” is a sure sign that you have no clue, no matter what the topic is. What you do is “demonstrate” something or show that your research “supports” something because the null hypothesis doesn’t fit the results. A good test is not “scientifically proven” it is reliable and valid. Strangely enough, we have ways of evaluating that: statistical analysis.