The Three Central Reasons Donald Trump Isn’t Qualified to Be President

Well, here we are. Donald Trump is the GOP nominee for President of the United States of America.

There’s a tendency among the media and others to grasp at the latest thing Trump says and extrapolate it out to the nth degree to show that he shouldn’t be President— he’s a Putin mole, he’s a virulent racist, he wants to start World War III. But Trump’s statements and his campaign are a symptom of the real disqualifying features.

The basic ideas that explain Donald Trump best, and which I hope you will stay laser-focused on from now until November, are:

Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about how the world works, is neither willing nor able to learn, and has a temperament that is a uniquely poor fit for a President.

Donald Trump Doesn’t Know Very Much About Things A Person Should Know To Be President

This is the Occam’s Razor to end all Occam’s Razors about Trump. Here are some things Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about, in no particular order:

Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about the Full Faith and Credit of the United States.
Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about Crimea or the sanctions we have today with Russia.
Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about the Geneva Conventions.
Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about the Constitution.
Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about immigration rates.
Donald Trump doesn’t know very much about crime rates.

Incidentally, one of Donald’s “tells” for when he doesn’t know about a topic is that he says, “We are looking into it.” (There ought to be a video montage of the many “Things Donald Trump is Looking Into” from the last 13 months of his campaign….)

So why doesn’t Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for President, know very much about these crucial subjects?

Donald Trump Doesn’t Know Very Much About Things A President Must Know Because He Has Mainly Been Thinking About Real Estate for the Last 50 Years

Look, at his core, Donald is a real estate dude. His dad was a real estate dude. He’s been involved with building stuff for 50 years . And setting aside the question of whether his businesses have been any good, he’s been thinking about land acquisition, construction, buildings, renovations, and more for a long, long time.

Foreign governments? Economic and fiscal policy? The checks and balances of our three branches of government? Nah. He’s been busy! He’s been busy trying to build and maintain his brand. And the Trump empire hasn’t had much to do with stuff that the President must know.

As a result, when Donald says something that’s far outside of what a normal politician would say — indeed, something that would normally end a regular politician’s career — just ask yourself: “Is this a totally nuts thing to say if you’re an older white male who has spent his entire life in real estate?”

But Trump can always learn, right?

Donald Trump is Not Going to Learn This Stuff Because He Doesn’t Like To Read

Donald doesn’t read much. It’s not his thing. For a real estate dude, that’s probably cool. For a President? Disaster. Hey, I love audiobooks as much as the next person (current audiobook: The Power Broker by Robert Caro), but Trump’s not going to play catchup on hundreds of must-know topics by watching cable TV, or listening to trusted advisors as they debate, or by donning a headset and having someone read to him. That’s not how it works. He’s not going to Audible-dot-com his way to a sufficient and current understanding of national security, the economy, where all the countries are on the map, and more. If he doesn’t know it by now, he will never, never, never know it.

But can’t Donald simply change his approach and become a mega-learner?

Donald Trump Isn’t Going to Change His Approach to Learning Because He Is 70 Years Old

Donald Trump is not young (neither is Hillary Clinton!). If Donald were a fresh-faced 35 year old, just recently eligible to be elected President, maybe we’d give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he could figure out how to get in the habit of reading every day for hours. But at 70? Come on — he’s going to keep being Donald Trump for the rest of his days, taking meetings and calls and using his prodigious mouth to opine about this and that, then going to events and watching TV at night.

Which, if you’re running the real estate business you’ve been involved in for 50 years, is just fine. But when you are the President of the United States of America, you have to know how to read a lot, every day, and you have to know a lot of stuff to begin with if you’re going to understand the stuff you’re reading.

Donald Trump Has A Terrible Temperament for a President

If you had an ignorant President who was incapable of learning, what kind of personality would be the worst possible pairing? How about a personality featuring deep narcissism, a tendency toward sudden anger and lashing out, and a problem with impulse control?

A Donald Trump who can be reliably made angry by insults from business partners, ex-spouses, and random people on Twitter can be made reliably angry by foreign dictators, terrorists, and many others, and will be ripe for manipulation by them, if he’s President.

A Donald Trump who promises vendettas today against people and companies he doesn’t like is going to fill our country with the fear of vendettas if he's President.

A Donald Trump who has chosen himself over all others, time and again, isn’t going to be able to serve someone else — the country or its people — if he’s President.

A President Trump would sit in the world’s most important decision-making seat, where every ignorance, every missed detail, every knee-jerk reaction, would ripple unavoidably into the work of government and the lives of the country’s and the world’s citizens. A Donald Trump who makes rash, unapologetic statements about things he doesn’t understand today is going to make equally rash decisions about things that affect millions of lives if he’s President.

So Let’s Stop Donald Trump

It goes without saying that I oppose Donald Trump. From a practical standpoint, the best way to stop Donald Trump, whether you’re conservative or liberal, is to vote for Hillary Clinton. She is the only other candidate who can win.

But the most effective criticism you can make— a criticism you’ll need to make over, and over, and over — is that Donald Trump (a) doesn’t know what he’s talking about, (b) isn’t willing or able to learn what a President needs to know, and (c) doesn’t have the right temperament to be President. We don’t need conspiracy theories or stretch claims to make our case. It’s dead simple. Super scary, but simple.

These three elements explain his rash statements, his incoherent policies, and the resulting humiliation of his supporters. They explain the core of who Donald is as a candidate and why he is so obviously unfit to be President. And these three elements call into doubt the judgment of every GOP leader who endorses or supports Trump.

We know what we need to do, and God help us all if we fail in our civic duty to stop Donald Trump from becoming President.