The response of top Republicans to Hamas’ horrific attack in Israel and the unfolding Israeli retaliation has left much to be desired, especially their absurd contention that it’s all President Joe Biden’s fault. But now Donald Trump has finally weighed in with his thoughts. The likely GOP nominee for president — who could well be in the Oval Office in a little over a year — is as incoherent and motivated by petty grudges and insecurity as ever, if not more so.
There isn’t much America can do to determine the outcome of this war; we’re sending Israel more weapons (on top of the billions in military aid we already give them) but, for better or worse, the Israeli government will make its own choices about how to respond to the attack. Trump has popped up to remind us of what made him so dangerous, and how disturbing it would be if he were the president who had to make momentous decisions in a similar moment of crisis.
In a speech Wednesday, while criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Trump is apparently still chapped that Netanyahu called Biden to congratulate him after the 2020 election), Trump went on a riff about the brilliance of Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah’s very smart, they’re all very smart. The press doesn’t like when they say it,” he said. “You know I said that President Xi of China — 1.4 billion people, he controls it with an iron fist — I said, ‘He’s a very smart man.’ They killed me the next day. I said he was smart. What am I gonna say? But Hezbollah, they’re very smart.”
Trump also said “they’re vicious and they’re smart” at another point, in what might or might not have been a reference to Hamas, because it’s often difficult to tell exactly what Trump is talking about when he is in stream-of-consciousness mode. (After the speech, a spokesman for Trump told The Washington Post that his “comments as meant to criticize unspecified U.S. officials for giving Hezbollah the idea to attack from the north.”)
His comments elicited a round of performative umbrage from the likes of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Nevertheless, the truth is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with acknowledging the cleverness of a foreign adversary, or even a group of terrorists. We don’t have to ascribe every conceivable character flaw to those who do abominable things.
But why is Trump always so keen to compliment the intelligence of the world’s worst leaders? Once, in a single interview he called Xi Jinping “a brilliant man,” Kim Jong Un “smart,” and Vladimir Putin “very smart.” He was in awe of Putin’s smarts in particular.
The answer is that it’s Trump’s own insecurity coming through. People who are actually smart don’t go around claiming to have a higher IQ than everyone in whatever room they’re in. He claimed that Barack Obama — who even his opponents would acknowledge is extremely smart — couldn’t possibly have gotten into Columbia University and Harvard Law School on his own merits, and he demanded to see Obama’s grades and test scores. Meanwhile, Trump dispatched his then-attorney Michael Cohen to threaten his own alma maters with legal action if they ever released his grades to the public.
And it’s notable that one of the dumbest things Trump ever said about his own intelligence came when he was asked in 2016 whom he consults on foreign policy, one of many areas where he had no experience prior to running for president. “I’m speaking with myself, number one,” he said, “because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.” No one should believe that Trump is a friend to Israel in any real sense, because he has no friends. So when Trump starts talking about the intelligence of foreign adversaries, it’s really about him. And the shock value of lauding dictators and terrorists for their savvy is just what he’s after. It’s a way of saying that he alone, possessed of a very good brain as he is, can see the true genius of the world’s worst villains. By his logic, those who are disgusted when he praises Putin or Hezbollah have only proven how smart he really is. This was part of Trump’s appeal to his supporters: Those elitists think you’re stupid, just like they think I’m stupid. But we’re the smart ones. We know what’s really going on, and we know that the people who look smart are the dummies. So now, some Israelis might be wondering whether the unsavory bargain they made with Trump was a mistake. The Netanyahu government welcomed his support for the building of West Bank settlements and for its contempt for Palestinian claims to self-determination. In return, they tolerated Trump’s obvious antisemitic impulses, and the fact that his election was celebrated by white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and his “very fine people on both sides” praise of those same white supremacists in Charlottesville, and the surge in antisemitic incidents — most notably the 2018 massacre of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — that followed his election. No one should believe that Trump is a friend to Israel in any real sense, because he has no friends. He has only insecurities, resentments and a thirst for self-aggrandizement. The last time he was president, foreign leaders realized that he was easy to manipulate: All they have to do is tell him he’s smart, and he’s putty in their hands. That will still be true should he become president again, and the consequences this time may be even worse.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
