I really don't find it coherent to call someone who you keep consistently losing to stupid.
Irrational means stupid.
Stupid can win for a very long time, and in the end the "loss" is born mostly by bag-holders.
They're not infallible, but modelling them as complete idiots that just happened to get lucky is also... Not really consistent with reality, as far as I can tell. These people might not be good people, but they're good at playing a certain kind of game.
Things can look stupid when we don't understand them, but there has to be some intelligence somewhere at some point even if the arrival of wealth then suffocates it with sycophants. If Musk or Trump or GWB were all *merely* the idiots they're often mocked as being, chances are we'd never have even heard of them. They almost certainly weren't even "merely average".
Now, stupidity that arrives after the bank balance reads a billion dollars, that's terrifyingly powerful.
2. You don't understand. Trump is successful because of his stupidity, selfishness, and vile behaviour. Not despite it. In 2016, the Republican primary field had 20 or so candidates on a wide range of reasonableness. Trump crushed them all, because he most represents the average Republican voter. If he were more intelligent, or if he cared more about anyone other than himself, they would not have voted for him. His arrogance, lack of intelligence and morals is quite literally his strength because it's what makes him so relateable to the American masses.
The other is that you are in a bubble and have been convinced that the leadership of the world’s premier superpower are below average intelligence, along with 70-80 million voters. The former is not something an intelligent person would believe, you have thrown out serious analysis for political theatre and memes and should rethink how you view the world. Now stop to consider that maybe actually half the country has a totally different worldview, and that their leadership, having reshaped global politics, is actually full of intelligent people who are cold and calculating. I know it’s harder to stomach, but just consider it for a moment.
Being propagandized into extremism does not require anyone to be a total idiot.
Everyone is susceptible to propaganda and populism.
Subset, propaganda is not strictly required for most of it, only for why e.g. Jan 6 didn't disqualify him.
I think he will be remembered for the decline and the loss of influence by America across the world that will be his legacy.
Given what words mean, approximately 122.3 million US citizens eligible to vote ought to be below average.
When you say bubble, I'm inclined to agree, though for reasons that I suspect are uncooth to say out loud: we here are a bubble of smart people, so to us normal looks dumb.
“The biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level.”
I’ll note you took “idiots” rather than uneducated - that demographic our President loves.
Instead, the smarter rich people stay out of the press. And the only reason we hear about them is because they were always very stupid.
The only reason we hear about Musk is because the gamble on PayPal gave him enough to then roll the dice again on a few more things, of which SpaceX and Tesla kinda actually worked.
Though with Tesla, their lifetime profits being ~= lifetime government subsidies to them and their consumers, by "worked" I mean "you can buy them and drive them" rather than it being a genuine business opportunity.
While this is a dick move, when the question is "is he smart?", it's still a positive result.