Opinion | Trump Is Not Dumb

“I hear a lot of people describe Trump as dumb. I think that’s just totally wrong. He’s in many ways diabolically shrewd. And one element of his diabolical shrewdness is that he picks on targets that it is hard to mobilize people to defend — undocumented immigrants, prime example. Here’s another one: How many people are going to go in the streets to chant, “Hands off Harvard! Hands off Skadden, Arps!” Nobody is going to do that because he’s picking on in these major educational and legal institutions, some institutions that are actually quite not popular, especially with his base. And so he’s very good at picking targets.