We have been hearing now for four years, ever since that escalator ride at Trump Tower, how then-candidate, now-President Trump is such an idiot. The media, Democrats, and NeverTrumpers, virtually in lockstep assured us that Trump would never be the Republican nominee. When he was, they doubled down promising that he would never be president. Every so-called opinion poll confirmed their predictions.

So who turned out to be smart, winning the White House, and who turned out to be a bunch of buffoons? Yet they still couldn’t admit that they were wrong, predicting that Trump would be impeached or that he would resign from office under intense pressure from critics and scandal. From Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti to Robert Mueller to Megan Rapinoe, each one was portrayed as the dragon-slayer ready to bring down Trump.

All have come and gone like the seasons, bringing down nothing but their reputations and what little integrity they might have possessed. Yet Trump haters won’t give up. Trump is still too stupid and incompetent to be president, they tell us. He is an embarrassment to the country and the world.

Yet on Friday, July 19, Trump sits at 49 percent total approval in the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, four points higher than his predecessor, Mr. Perfect, exactly eight years ago. These approval numbers are despite what many have described as a bad week for the president with his “unforced error” of going after the four lovely patriots of the “Jihad Squad” and telling them that if America is so bad, they are welcome to “go back” to somewhere, anywhere, that is more to their liking.

Screen grab from YouTube 

Brit Hume, godfather of the Republican D.C. establishment, not a NeverTrumper, but more of a SometimesTrumper, said Trump’s tweets were “politically stupid.” When Rush Limbaugh and others suggested that Trump’s tweets were strategic and calculated rather than stupid, Hume dismissed this immediately: “I think that's too smart by half, too clever by half, Trump couldn't put something like this together, are you kidding me?”

Of course, Trump couldn’t put something like this together. He isn’t clever enough. Yet he was smart enough to defeat 17 competent and experienced contenders for the Republican nomination in 2016 despite having never run for political office. And he is still president after two and a half years of nonstop negative media coverage and criticism from Democrats and many Republicans.

Reuters reluctantly reported: “Republican support for Trump rises after racially charged tweets.” Jake Tapper, liberal CNN mouthpiece, had to acknowledge, “Dem sources admit Trump's 'brilliant' move to make stars of AOC, Omar.”

So, which is it? Did Trump stupidly make a racist, sexist, xenophobic, nativist, white-supremacist tweet as the media and NeverTrumpers claim? Or did he just make the Jihad Squad the new face of the Democratic Party?

Who hasn’t been in the news this past week? How about the 20-plus Democrats vying for the party’s nomination to go up against Goliath Trump next summer? Other than news of the next Democrat primary debate or who is ahead of who in the latest poll, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg are no longer newsworthy.

Instead they, along with Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrat party, have been forced to rally around Ocasio-Cortez and Omar. That seems a pretty smart move by Trump.

Axios recently polled what it called “white, non-college voters who embraced Donald Trump in 2016 but are needed by Democrats in swing House districts.” Only 22 percent had a favorable view of Ocasio-Cortez with shockingly only 9 percent viewing Omar favorably. This same poll noted that socialism was viewed negatively by 69 percent of swing voters.

With a few tweets and comments, Trump has rebranded the Democratic Party as the party of socialism, with its new party leaders viewed negatively by the vast majority of swing voters.

Are Republicans fleeing the party over Trump’s tweets? Hardly. GOP support for Trump rose this past week. His rally in North Carolina was as enthusiastic as ever. And those hapless Democrats running for their party’s nomination became yesterday’s news as quickly as Trump-slayer of-the-week Megan Rapinoe.

Democrats, in a fleeting moment of honesty, understand the brilliance of Trump’s tweets and framing of the Democrat party, as they admitted to Jake Tapper. Rasmussen also reported that by a 42 to 29 percent margin, likely Democrat voters want the party to be more like Nancy Pelosi than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yet thanks to President Trump, Nancy Pelosi has had to shift towards Ocasio-Cortez rather than vice versa, defending the Jihad Squad against Trump’s tweets.

For Pelosi it’s the path of least resistance. If she denounces the squad, there will be an internal civil war within her party. If she defends them, she makes them the face of the party. Trump has put her in a box.

Some may call it 4-D chess. Instead it may be decades of street smarts developed in the trenches of the New York City real estate development world, along with the branding experience of running a successful television reality show for a decade. What it is not is Trump being stupid.

It’s not just politics. Trump’s supposed stupidity is on display elsewhere. His tough trade war with China is reaping benefits. The U.S. economy is humming along and as the Wall Street Journal reports: “China’s State-Driven Growth Model Is Running Out of Gas.” Trump has visited North Korea and has a constructive and personal relationship with Kim Jong Un, a first for an American president.

Mexico is suddenly securing its southern border and Trump is doing via executive order what Congress is too lazy to do for asylum-seeking and birthright citizenship.

Spygate is ready to unfold and burst, with declassifications and hopefully accountability for its wrongdoers.

Jeffrey Epstein, the latest Trump-slayer for the wishful thinking Democrats and media, will be anything but. Does anyone really believe that if Epstein had dirt on Trump, we wouldn’t have known it before the election? Epstein and the Clintons were good pals. If Epstein had incriminating photos of videos of Trump with underage girls, Hillary would have used this in 2016 rather than paying millions for a phony dossier. Instead like everything else, Epstein will likely backfire on the left, as Vanity Fair described, “It’s going to be staggering, the amount of names.”

For being so stupid, Trump continues to outsmart the smart set on the left, the media geniuses, Hollywood, academia, and the Democrat party. His opponents keep calling him an idiot and he runs circles around them. Trump is winning, and his supporters are not yet tired of it.

Image credit: YouTube screen shot

Brian C. Joondeph, MD, is a Denver-based physician and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn, Twitter, and QuodVerum.