The TOI correspondent from Washington: The US state department on Monday discovered that in the Trump era, it is stupid to amplify the word stupid, a prerogative that appears to belong to the US President alone.Officials hurriedly deleted a social media post featuring secretary of state Marco Rubio’s remarks in New Delhi after critics pointed out that he appeared — perhaps unintentionally, perhaps subliminally — to be describing President Trump as one of the “stupid people” who “say dumb things.”The diplomatic clean-up operation began after Rubio was asked during a press conference about racist comments directed at Indians coming out of the US, including Trump’s recent amplification of a post referring to India as a “hellhole.”America’s top diplomat responded with admirable bluntness: “Every country in the world has stupid people who say dumb things.”Also read | ‘Trump is a big fan of India, PM Modi’: Rubio pushes back against anti-India rhetoricThe problem, as social media users immediately noticed, was that the “dumb thing” in question had been amplified by Trump himself. Within hours, the state department deleted the clip from its official account, producing the rare spectacle of America’s diplomatic HQ essentially yelling, “Nothing to see here!” while sprinting away from its own post.Political commentator Ed Krassenstein captured the absurdity succinctly: India questions racist remarks from America; Rubio says every country has stupid people; State Department posts it online; State department realizes Rubio may have just called Trump stupid; State Department deletes post. Modern diplomacy, distilled into four acts.To be fair, Rubio may simply have been speaking the dominant language of Trump-era politics. No American politician has done more to mainstream the word than Trump himself, who has elevated “stupid” and “low IQ” to official rhetorical primacy. In fact, he once explained his preference for the term. “I used to use the word incompetent,” he said in a 2024 interview. “Now I just call them stupid. There’s no better word than stupid.”The President deploys the phrase with industrial efficiency. Rivals are “stupid.” Judges are “stupid.” Prosecutors are “low IQ.” Former aides become “dumb” within minutes of resignation. Nato allies are frequently “stupid countries.” Journalists are “morons,” “idiots,” and of course, “stupid.”Researchers tracking Trump’s use of “low IQ” have found notable demographic patterns. Over a four-year period, roughly 60 percent of Trump’s “low IQ” attacks targeted Black or minority lawmakers and public figures. Among frequent recipients: House members Maxine Waters, Jasmine Crockett, and Hakeem Jeffries; and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – all black. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina, has also received cognitive downgrades from the White House Diagnostic Department, whose head, communications director Stephen Cheung, had this to say on Saturday about Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s critiques on Iran: “Pompeo has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals.“Indeed, no group enjoys immunity from the president’s favorite epithet. Trump has also branded liberal white critics Gavin Newsom and Robert De Niro, and even conservative pundits Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, as stupid and “low IQ,” once they drifted out of ideological alignment.The word itself comes from the Latin stupere, meaning “to be stunned or numb.” It entered modern political folklore most memorably during Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, when strategist James Carville famously reminded staffers: “It’s the economy, stupid.” At the time, the phrase was considered sharp, irreverent, self-deprecating campaign slang.What makes the phenomenon particularly striking is that American children are increasingly taught not to use words like “stupid” at all. Teachers discourage the term as insensitive and demeaning. The President of the United States, meanwhile, has essentially transformed “stupid” into a multifunctional verb, noun, adjective, and occasionally, foreign policy doctrine.
