“He ignored the Left and the MSM, which I believe is why the Democrats took to calling him stupid, in various ways, including Tip O’Neill (Speaker of the House) calling him an “amiable dunce” on camera, on national television. They thought he had to be a dunce if he didn’t see that he had to kow-tow to them.”
The “amiable dunce” comment did not come from Tip O’Neill, it came from Democrat “wise man” Clark Clifford at a Georgetown dinner parties in 1981, who was later implicated in a banking scandal. Never happened on camera...
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I'm not saying Clark Clifford didn't utter the epithet, and perhaps he even invented, but I heard Tip O'Neill say it on television, and I'm not the only one:
Who knew that beneath the façade of the “amiable dunce” (in Tip O'Neill's biting put down), lurked a Master of the Universe or, as James Mann described a later group of officials, a “Vulcan”?— "The Ongoing Mystery of Ronald Reagan, by Michael Schaller, from Diplomatic History, 5 March 2010, Oxford University Press, p. 455.