'Everyone Is Smart Except Trump,' Right Lefties?

Here’s the narrative: Donald Trump is a moron. Nobody else is. Everyone else is smart. Anderson Cooper is smart, Mark Halperin is smart, the New York Times, CNN and NPR are smart.

Democrats are smart. Republicans who criticize him are smart.

All are smart and wise except Donald Trump.

Except it simply can’t be true.

In a fantastic piece in The American Spectator, Rabbi Dov Fisher torches the media narrative that they – and all who agree with them against Trump are wise and smart and Trump stands alone as the big dummy.

It really is quite simple,” he begins. “Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do.”

He excoriates the media for never having achieved anything. They’re not president and they’re not billionaires, but they’re smart and Trump is not.

But Trump voters “get” him.

Trump’s voters get him because not only is he we, but we are he. We were not snowflaked-for-life by effete professors who themselves never had negotiated tough life-or-death serious deals. Instead we live in the real world, and we know how that works. Not based on social science theories, not based on “conceptual negotiating models.” But based on the people we have met over life and always will hate. That worst boss we ever had. The coworker who tried to sabotage us. We know the sons of bums whom we survived, the dastardly types who are out there, and we learned from those experiences how to deal with them. We won’t have John Kerry soothe us by having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” carols.

A highlight of Rabbi Fisher’s essay is how Trump deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin:

Here’s the thing: Putin is a dictator. He answers to no one. He does whatever he wants. If there arises an opponent, that guy dies. Maybe the opponent gets poked with a poisoned umbrella. Maybe he gets shot on the street. Maybe the opponent is forced to watch Susan Rice interviews telling the world that Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video seen by nine derelicts in Berkeley and that Bowe Berghdal served with honor and distinction. But, one way or another, the opponent dies.

Trump knows this about Putin. And here is what that means:

If you insult Putin in public, like by telling the newsmedia just before or after meeting with him that he is the Butcher of Crimea, and he messed with our elections, and is an overall jerk — then you will get nothing behind closed doors from Putin. Putin will decide “To heck with you, and to heck with the relationship we just forged.” Putin will get even, will take intense personal revenge, even if it is bad for Russia — even if it is bad for Putin. Because there are no institutional reins on him.

But if you go in public and tell everyone that Putin is a nice guy (y’know, just like Kim Jong Un) and that Putin intensely maintains that he did not mess with elections — not sweet little Putey Wutey (even though he obviously did) — then you next can maintain the momentum established beforehand in the private room. You can proceed to remind Putin what you told him privately: that this garbage has to stop — or else

[…]

If he sweet-talks Putin in public — just Putin on the Ritz — then everything that Trump has told Putin privately can be reinforced with action, and he even can wedge concessions because, against that background, Putin knows that no one will believe that he made any concessions. Everyone is set to believe that Putin is getting whatever he wants, that Trump understands nothing. So, in that setting, Putin can make concessions and still save face.

This is why Trump is the way he is. And it’s the only possible way to be that might affect positive change.

I recommend reading the rest of the piece.

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