I have to give Trump credit.  Despite having virtually no political experience, he went face to face with one of the most experienced and intelligent politicians in America Sunday night, and beat her at her own game.

And he was quick on his feet.

Hillary said “It’s just a good thing that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” to which Trump brilliantly replied:

“Because you’d be in jail.”

The crowd went wild.

That’ll go down in history as one of the greatest debate moments in U.S. history, along with “you’re no Jack Kennedy” and Reagan’s famous “there you go again.”

In an earlier post, I had somewhat facetiously estimated Trump’s IQ to be only 94 (white norms) because he failed to correctly multiply 17 by 6.  Perhaps his Arithmetic IQ is only 94, but having beat the 140 IQ Hillary in a debate (something not even Barack Obama accomplished), I assign him a verbal-improvisational IQ of 140.

Debating must be a fairly g loaded skill, so Trump’s debate performance, especially against a much more experienced opponent is empirical evidence of IQ.

Arithmetic and debating can be thought of two very different kinds of “verbal” subtests and Trump clocks in at IQ 117 when both are averaged .  On the WAIS-III IQ test, someone who averages the equivalent of IQ 117 on the various verbal subtest,  clocks in at IQ 121 on the composite verbal score (a good proxy for overall IQ).

Trump is probably smarter than your typical inheritance billionaire (IQ  114) because he built on his inheritance, but he’s probably not as smart as your typical self-made billionaire (IQ 132).  An IQ of 121 is entirely believable.

Nonetheless, winning a debate and winning an election are two very different things.  It’s unlikely Trump’s strong debate performance will heal his political wounds caused by a release of audio of him saying extremely lewd things.

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