Donald Trump calls himself a very stable genius. He said it dozens of times. Whenever anyone questions his intelligence, his memory, or his decision, Trump reminds everyone that his brain is, in his words, one of the best.
I'm highly educated. I went to the Wharton School of Finance. I went to the Wharton School of Finance.
I was a very fine student. They didn't go to the Wharton School of Finance. They did.
But you know what? They're really smart. I went to a great school, business school, the Wharton School of Finance.
A great school. I've also heard I was first in my class at the Wharton School of Finance. And sometimes when you hear it, you don't say anything.
You just let it go. We have spent so much time diagnosing [music] Donald Trump. He's a dictator.
He's a fascist. He's a malignant narcissist whose blood type is frier oil. But it's pretty clear that America is the one that needs the diagnosis because whatever's wrong with him, we love it.
Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to the American people and it might be time to take a good hard look. I'm sorry. I told myself that this show would be uplifting tonight, but unfortunately I'm too depressed and quite frankly very very hung over.
[cheering] [applause] Hey, it's times like these when I can lean on the wisdom and support of the best news team in the world. We all know Donald Trump has a long list of enemies. Iran, Democrats, far-left [music] radicals known as the Catholic Church.
Only one opponent that Trump hates so much that when he goes after them, he actually becomes [music] them. You know, the windmills windmills wind. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Have some respect for the commanderin-chief. That's president [ __ ] to you. Do you know what it means to have every single person in New York booing you?
Even a guy taking a [ __ ] on the subway will have one New Yorker cheering him on. All that incessant booing, he must have been devastated. It was certainly amazing.
It was It was I think mostly cheers. [screaming] Mostly cheers. I guess the DOJ redacted all the booze before they hit his ears.
During the game, President Trump appeared to fall asleep. Cheating on the election. There's What?
Do you have evidence to support? All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.
All you have to do is look, people. It's right there in front of you. I know it sounds easy, but for Donald Trump, it's getting harder and harder these days.
[cheering] What evidence is there to prove that there was a range? I don't. Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove.
[screaming] The fact that there is no evidence is the evidence. We'll start with Troy Iwatada. Troy, [cheering] [applause] it's up to you.
Please give us something to lift our spirit. [laughter] Look, lift lift spirits. I thought I was reporting on Senate results.
No, no, we don't need that right now. We need someone to find the perfect words to explain to us that everything's going to be okay. So, go.
Don't put that on me. I can barely help myself. I am in a deep pit of despair.
Don't look at me. Okay. Okay.
Michael Costa, let's go to you. [cheering] That will single-handedly fill us with joy. Pass.
I pass on that. That is way too much pressure for old Costa. I didn't even vote.
What? You know what? Grace said something this morning that really made my heart sore or whatever [ __ ] you're looking for.
So great. Grace Koolage Schmidt. Let's go.
Let's go. I can't wait [applause] to hear your words of comfort. Yeah.
I didn't say anything to Comfort Costa. I just asked to borrow a phone charger. We will not go quietly into the night.
We will not vanish without a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive.
We celebrate our Independence Day. No, that's Bill Pullman's speech from Independence Day. That does not count.
No, it has to be your own words. Des, [laughter] come on. I don't know how to give a rousing speech.
I'm I'm just a girl. Oh, you blew it, Grace. Josh.
Josh, what about you? All right, [music] don't worry. Don't worry, Desi.
I I got this. Okay. [laughter] You ever go to the clinic thinking you [music] have herpes [laughter] and then you find out?
you find out that you do have herpes. But it's kind of nice because now at least you know. [laughter] [applause] Was that inspiring?
No. No, not at all. Please, please, Josh, give me give me something.
Hold on one second. Uh, real quick. Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm a mouthful. No. No.
He took that bite on purpose. But this time, Desi Litic, host of The Daily Show, played a clip that made Trump's genius claim look less like confidence [music] and more like a product that can't survive a demonstration. The clip wasn't complicated.
It was Trump describing a cognitive test, the kind doctors give to check if someone's brain is functioning normally. And the first question on that test, according to Trump, is very simple. Name four animals: lion, giraffe, bear, shark.
Except when Trump tried to explain the test on camera, he couldn't get through the list without changing the animals, forgetting which ones he'd said, and restarting the whole thing. Desi Litic didn't mock Trump for struggling. She made a different point.
She said, "Donald Trump talks about his IQ like it's a campaign promise nobody is allowed to audit. " And that line hit because it's true. Trump has spent years building his political identity around being smarter than everyone else, smarter than his opponents, smarter than the media, smarter than generals, scientists, economists, anyone who disagrees with him.
But when the clip plays, when you actually watch him try to name four animals in a row, the claim and the evidence don't match. First attempt, you have a [music] lion, a bear, an alligator, and a squirrel. Second attempt, a lion, a giraffe, a whale, and a shark.
Third attempt. A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Three different lists, same [music] question.
30 seconds. If you grew up in an era when calling yourself a genius meant you could back it up with more than just volume, this moment reads differently. Cuz Desi wasn't asking Trump to solve a complex problem or debate policy.
[music] She was showing him struggle with a task designed for people recovering from strokes. And the struggle wasn't the issue. Everyone forgets words.
Everyone has awkward moments. The issue was Trump's reaction to anyone noticing. Because after Desi's segment aired, Trump posted on Truth Social calling her low-rated, nasty, and fake news.
He said his mind was perfect, his memory unmatched, and that the clip was taken out of context. Desi responded the next night with one line, "Donald, if the explanation for your genius needs more editing than the original question, that may be part of the problem. " The studio erupted because Desi had turned Trump's defense into evidence.
The more he insisted he was a genius, the more the clip of him changing the animals played in people's minds. This is the subscribe moment. If you value the clip that makes the claim explain it's a moment where confidence meets evidence, subscribe to the narrative brief.
We play the clip that explains the claim. Desi's genius move wasn't attacking Trump's intelligence. It was letting Trump's own words do the work.
He played the boast, "I'm a very stable genius. " Right next to the clip of him forgetting which animals he'd already named. The contrast was devastating.
In one clip, Trump spoke with absolute certainty about his mind. In the other, he couldn't finish a four item list without editing it twice. Desessie called it the advertisement meeting the product.
And once the audience saw that gap, Trump's genius claim stopped sounding like strength. It sounded like a man trying to sell something the demonstration couldn't support. Made Desessie's approach so effective is that she didn't need to argue Trump was unintelligent.
She just needed to show the gap between what he claims and what he demonstrates. Trump says he has one of the highest IQs. Desi played the clip of him struggling with a list designed for patients with cognitive impairment.
Trump says his memory is perfect. Desi showed him forgetting which animals he'd said 15 seconds earlier. Trump says he's a very stable genius.
Desi let the audience decide if a genius needs three attempts to name a lion, giraffe, bear, [music] and shark. And that's the trap. Because the more Trump insists he's brilliant, the more people remember the clip.
[music] And the more people remember the clip, the less the boast sounds like confidence. The animal naming portion is considered one of the easiest sections. [music] Medical professionals administering the test expect patients to answer correctly without hesitation.
Trump's description of the test, where he [music] repeatedly changed which animals were on the list, became a viral moment not because he failed the test, but because he couldn't consistently describe a test he claimed to have aced. Jesse's point stands. If you build your entire identity on being smarter than everyone, your sentences will be inspected like receipts.
And if those sentences can't survive a 30-second clip, the identity collapses under its own weight. We play the clip that makes the boast explain itself. That is the whole job.
The patterns repeat. We slow them down.
