How Dumb Is Trump?

“Anyone who feels compelled to boast how smart he is clearly suffers from a profound insecurity about his intelligence and accomplishments. In Trump’s case, he has good reason to have doubts. … A linguistic analysis by Politico found that Trump speaks at a third-grade level. A study by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University compared last year’s Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in terms of their vocabulary and grammar. Trump scored at a fifth-grade level, the lowest of all the candidates.”

Peter Dreier

Trump Negotiates Like a Hostage Taker

“Across an array of domestic and foreign challenges, Trump’s go-to move has become to create what amounts to a political hostage situation. He’s either terminating, or threatening to terminate, a series of domestic and international policies adopted by earlier administrations — and insisting that others grant him concessions to change his mind.”

— Ron Brownstein

Trump Tongue-Tied by Tragedy

“One of the difficult but primary duties of the modern presidency is to speak for the nation in times of tragedy. A space shuttle explodes. An elementary school is attacked. The twin towers come down in a heap of ash and twisted steel. It falls to the president to express something of the nation’s soul — grief for the lost, sympathy for the suffering, moral clarity in the midst of confusion, confidence in the unknowable purposes of God. … Not every president does this equally well. But none have been incapable. Until Donald Trump.”

— Michael Gerson

Coast Guard Head Expresses Support for Transgender Troops

“We have made an investment in you and you have made an investment in the Coast Guard, and I will not break faith.”

— U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft, pledging he “will not break faith” with transgender personnel, “marking the strongest rebuttal yet by a leader of the armed forces to President Trump’s declaration that he wants to ban all transgender troops,” Politico reports.