Donald Trump Doesn’t Know He’s Doing Fascist Things

He knows what he’s doing, but he also has no idea.

One of the most difficult parts of evaluating Donald Trump’s presidency is how different the man is from everyone else who’s ever been in his position. Trump is not an intelligent person. Listen to him speak, or read his tweets, and not a single remotely aware human would consider him eloquent. He is impetuous, emotional, and frequently childish.

There is little debating this. Even if you still subscribe to his ideas, and consider yourself part of his loyal base, you can’t make a real case that Trump is a top intellectual mind. Part of his appeal (to the white, non-college educated voters who make up his base) is his status as an outsider who sounds like the “average person” when he talks about policy.

Media members are used to covering presidents who speak in carefully managed, articulated sentences. Even the presidents who did harm to the country (looking at you, George W.) were intelligent people who could speak in consistent sentences. Part of the reason the media has faced so much criticism is their struggle with how to treat Trump. He’s not generally an intellectual peer of his lawmaking colleagues, and he frequently says things that either are blatantly false or will be reversed within a day. You can’t report every outlandish statement for fear of public fatigue, and you can’t calm down the critics on the right when you…