Politico | ‘Stable genius’ Donald Trump has spent decades fixating on IQ
- People who know Donald Trump suspect his IQ obsession stems in part from a desire to project an image of success, despite scattered business failings and allegations of incompetence
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Andrew Restuccia on politico.com on May 30, 2019.
It was January 2004 and Donald Trump was on the Today Show to promote a new reality TV series called The Apprentice.
Almost immediately after the interview began, Trump started bragging about the unparalleled intellect of the contestants who would compete for a job at one of his companies.
“These are 16 brilliant people. I mean, they have close to 200 IQs, all of them,” he told Matt Lauer. “And some may be beautiful and some may not be beautiful. But everybody has an incredible brain.”
It wasn’t the first time Trump fixated on IQ as a measure of a person’s worth – or, as is frequently the case, worthlessness. And it wouldn’t be the last.
Fifteen years later, Trump, now the president of the United States, still uses IQ as a shorthand for intelligence, dividing the people in his orbit into winners and losers.
In private, according to interviews with a half-dozen people close to him, Trump frequently asserts that people he likes have genius-level IQs.