This is not an intellectual stupidity. I imagine Trump’s I.Q. is fine. It is a moral and emotional stupidity. He blunders so often and so badly because he has a narcissist’s inability to get inside the hearts and minds of other people. It’s a stupidity that in almost pure clinical form, flows out of his inability to feel, a stupidity of the heart.

In most times and cultures, people realized that understanding a person or situation is as much an emotional process as an analytical one. In the Bible the word “to know” covers a range of activities, from having a conversation with, to having sex with, to entering into a commitment with and much else — all the different ways we come to understand each other.

St. Augustine’s theory of knowledge begins with emotion. Love is a focus of attention. Love is a motivation to learn more about a person. Love is a reverence for the image of God in each person.

Through his own failures, Trump illustrates by counterexample that the heart is the key to understanding.