and a demonstrated willingness to use it -- e.g. Venezuela

What's really fun is that conventional weapons can protect you from a crazy aggressor if you're strong enough, but nuclear weapons may not. They only act as a deterrent, so they require your enemy to believe you'll use them, believe that they can't destroy all of them before you use them, and understand the horrible consequences of retaliation.

I get the impression that Trump is pretty negative on nuclear weapons and I don't think he'd do something that could provoke nuclear retaliation. But I doubt he'll be our last mad king. I think the odds are pretty high of at least a small nuclear war within my lifetime. Even if the US keeps it together, proliferation means much higher odds of some idiot leader somewhere pressing the Button.

> What makes you think h is smart instead of a blubbering idiot that Mr Magoo his way through life?

The fact that he's President. Twice. He maneouvred himself into the most powerful seat in the world. Twice. I'm tremendously sceptical that someone stupid can wind up there like that. (Again, not necessarily intelligent. You don't need to be intelligent to clear the Republican field in 2016. You do need to be crafty.)

That's certainly closer to my understanding of the guy. He really doesn't feel "smart" in any of the usual sense of the term.

It's entirely possible that you can be on the stupid side of Chesterton's fence (to abuse the metaphor) and take it down, causing all the expected havok, and then claim you're excelling at your goals because you just have a sociopathic approach to the world.

Sure, picking up Maduro was well executed... and then he has been replaced with (checks notes... ) "the Maduro Regime".

Yeah, that -screams- competence.

Or they look deeper and note that the folksy bragging about pretty basic and irrelevant misunderstandings continues into the minutes of meetings his base that laps that stuff up doesn't bother paying attention to, where there isn't any strategic value to dissembling or being mildly irritating to the apolitical CEOs he's supposed to be giving bland assurances to, and conclude the emperor actually doesn't have any clothes. There are, of course, smart and well connected people that want someone whose extraordinary talent is being the centre of attention occupying the centre of attention.

> wut. this is a joke, right?

No, it's not. He's smart. His political instincts are well honed. And he's good at surrounding himself with strategists.

I'm not sure he's wickedly intelligent. And he's getting old, which cuts into his cleverness and memory. But his wit is quick (recall the Republican debates), retention used to be spectacular and has achieved things which you simply cannot do by being the bumbling dope he's sometimes characterised as.

I frequently see people saying that Trump is great, but he's let down by those around him. As if he didn't put them all there.

In any case, all you have to do is listen to the man talk. If you can hit stop before your brains start leaking onto the floor, the conclusion is inescapable.

For most of his life he did nothing that would require any sort of smarts. Becoming POTUS was quite an accomplishment, but he lucked into it. He happened to have a style and set of opinions that appealed to a large group of voters. He's charismatic in an empty sort of way that still works on a lot of people. He had a pretty pathetic set of opponents both in the primaries and the general. And he just barely won. Nothing in his campaign was shrewdly designed, he was just doing what he does, and it happened to work.

Birth him into an ordinary family instead of a rich one and he's going to be a used car salesman griping about getting bumped into the next tax bracket when he makes too many sales.