They value intelligence, but it is a faux intelligence based on their own terms.
If you are the correct color, the correct gender, vote the correct way, believe in and support the correct issues you are rewarded with the status of having intelligence.
And if you don't - well then, you are obviously an idiot.
And if you take someone like Trump, an outsider who came in and RUINED all their precious plans, well then, he's got to be the biggest idiot of them all.
And Trump's supporters, while idiots, somehow have a sense that Trump is even a bigger idiot, and have to invent conspiracies and twist their thoughts into knots to convince themselves that maybe Trump isn't quite that bad a dolt, and just maybe he might know what he is doing.
They honestly BELIEVE this.
And even though time and time again that we have seen, Trump has outplayed them at every turn, they can't see this clearly at all because, well, Trump is an idiot.
Nothing can convince them otherwise. No amount of truth, no facts can convince them. It's almost like a religion with them. Believe that Trump is an idiot and you shall be rewarded with eternal intelligence.
And Trump knows all of this. And uses it to his advantage every day. If your enemy thinks you're an idiot, let them think that.
I have this image of Trump, with his finger firmly planted in the nostril of the MSM, jerking them back and forth and leading them wherever he wants to lead them, all while they are decrying Trump as the worst president in the history of our Republic.
You should post this in the NY Times comment section of the article
The Left seems to believe that the ragtag group of sexual deviants, ghetto dwellers, basement dwellers, America haters, losers, freeloaders, unassimilated immigrants, dropouts and street thugs they call their voters are, on the average, smarter than gainfully employed, self-reliant, white, married, conservative Christians who overwhelmingly voted for President Trump.