With friends like these...
Donald Trump's team in the White House really, really does not agree that he is "like a smart person."
The latest eye-opening example of this comes from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who, according to sources, viciously mocked his boss's intelligence during a private dinner with a tech sector CEO.
BuzzFeed reports that in July, while having dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz, McMaster "bluntly trashed his boss."
The sources told BuzzFeed they heard about the comments directly from Catz.
Among McMaster's epithets:
"Idiot."
"Dope."
The intelligence of a "kindergartener."
Another source told BuzzFeed that McMaster had made similar comments to him at another time, "including that the president lacked the necessary brainpower to understand the matters before the National Security Council."
Spokespeople for McMaster and Oracle both, of course, deny the accounts. But the veracity of the incident is not hard to accept, coming from a member of Trump's inner circle.
In early October, reports emerged that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had called Trump a "moron" after a meeting at the Pentagon. The same day, Tillerson spoke to the press and reaffirmed his commitment to the administration, but did not explicitly deny having called Trump a moron.
Considering that the motivation for the comment — which Mensa helpfully offered to put to the test, literally — may have been Trump's demand for a massive new stockpile of nuclear weapons, it would seem justified for Tillerson not only to have said it, but to be reluctant to retract it.
Trump, of course, lost it over the reports, and threatened to revoke the broadcasting license for NBC, the station which originally reported Tillerson's comments — which served not only to buttress the notion of Trump being a moron, but also to play right into the appearance that the White House has become an "adult day care center."
Trump has made it clear that he thinks he's the only one who matters in the White House.
But as far as his Cabinet members see it, Trump doesn't have the mental capacity to manage a lemonade stand, let alone the entirety of the federal government.
