Without many good scoops from their Democrat buddies these days, Politico has taken to psychoanalyzing President Trump.

It's embarrassing:

It was January 2004 and Donald Trump was on the “Today Show” to promote a new reality TV series called “The Apprentice.”

Almost immediately after the interview began, Trump started bragging about the unparalleled intellect of the contestants who would compete for a job at one of his companies.

“These are 16 brilliant people. I mean, they have close to 200 IQs, all of them,” he told host Matt Lauer. “And some may be beautiful and some may not be beautiful. But everybody has an incredible brain.”

It wasn’t the first time Trump fixated on IQ as a measure of a person’s worth — or, as is frequently the case, worthlessness. And it wouldn’t be the last. Fifteen years later, Trump, now president of the United States, still uses IQ as a shorthand for intelligence, dividing the people in his orbit into winners and losers.

Politico goes on to name several cases where Trump praised people he likes as smart, and certain others as "low I.Q. individuals.' Then they stroked their chins for the explanation:

While the exact reason for Trump’s IQ obsession is difficult to nail down, people who know him suspect it stems in part from his desire to project an image of success and competence, despite scattered business failings and repeated allegations from critics that he’s incompetent. Trump is also known for being thin-skinned. He often fires back at anyone who criticizes him with a barrage of insults, while simultaneously building himself up.

Blech. Fox News host Charles Payne thinks it's pretty harsh.

My goodness this is harsh and hearsay best a personal hit job at worse...completely unnecessary either way.  But it's perfect example of today's news media #assassinationnews https://t.co/nKbdARSz7M

— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) May 31, 2019

But actually, I think it's something else.

He's being funny. And he's doing it to jack with pious self-important leftists, none of whom are impressed with anyone's intelligence other than their own.

Trump is an entertainer, after all, with an expert eye for being funny. He didn't get to the top of reality T.V. by Woody Allen-ing it, or making grandiose claims as a means of deflecting from his own failures, or whtever it is Politico is obsessing about

He's doing it to troll them. He's getting their goat. He knows just how self-important these people are and hitting them where it hurts - in their inflated sense of having high I.Q.s. There's nothing like taking leftists down a peg.

And when he makes those repeated statements about I.Q, it's pretty obvious, he's trolling them. They don't exactly notice, which is why it's funny.