Donald Trump’s sudden shift in his insult pattern gives something away
Despite his erratic and unstable nature, Donald Trump is largely a man of patterns. In fact he seems so at home with his patterns, he doesn’t appear to even know he’s engaging in them. For instance, while he hurls cheap insults at all of his adversaries, he consistently accuses his black adversaries of being unintelligent. But something just shifted.
Whenever Donald Trump wants to lash out at an African American public figure, he nearly always does so by calling them a dummy. Democratic Chairwoman Maxine Waters is a low IQ individual. CNN host Don Lemon is a low IQ individual. Basketball star LeBron James is a low IQ individual. We all know what the commonality is here in Trump’s deranged mind. But over the past few weeks, Trump’s lack of intellect and cognitive ability has come directly under fire, and his attack pattern has shifted accordingly.
First, Michael Cohen testified that Donald Trump’s grades and SAT scores are so bad, he sent threatening letters to everyone who might have been in position to publish them. Then Trump unwittingly played into the stereotype by referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook as “Tim Apple.” Okay, so Trump was a poor student, he isn’t particularly bright, and he frequently misspeaks. So what?
When Donald Trump attacked John McCain over the weekend, he insisted that McCain was “last in his class” at Annapolis. Hmm, so Trump suddenly cares about other people’s grades. Then after Joe Biden got a bit tongue tied, Trump tweeted that Biden was a “low I.Q. individual.” Wait a minute here.
Trump has expanded beyond his default racist position of attacking the intelligence of black people, and he’s now making a point of attacking the intelligence of white men. We think we know what’s going on here. Before, it was just a matter of Trump being racist enough to think that black people are dumb, and his base being racist enough to eat up the stereotype. But Trump has always viewed other white men as being on his own plane of existence. Now that one incident after another is shining a light on Trump’s lack of intellect, he’s lashing out at his fellow white men, because he sees them as his real competition. Racist is as racist does.
