Seeing Donald Trump run a country makes it painfully obvious why nearly all of his businesses failed.

• He thinks he’s smarter than everyone in every room he enters. This is the telltale sign of someone suffering from the Dunning–Kruger effect.
• He believes that what he thinks matters more than facts — you know, his “instincts.”
• He gets rid of anyone around him who might tell him something he doesn’t want to hear, even when what they’re saying is true and would actually help him.
• He demands blind loyalty, even in the face of sheer stupidity on his part.
• He has absolutely zero self-awareness.
• The only “negotiating” tactic he knows how to use is abusing whatever power he might have in hopes of forcing people to do what he wants. While that might win a few battles, it ultimately makes everyone else hate you and never want to work with you — unless they’re just as scummy and sleazy as he is.
• He has absolutely no intellectual curiosity. If I were ranking this on a scale of 1–10, Trump would land somewhere in the negative. I’ve never seen someone with such a complete lack of desire to be properly informed or educated.
• He’s a dangerous mixture of a massive ego and an infinite pit of insecurities. This creates someone driven by the belief that they’re better than everyone else, yet who will never be happy or satisfied with anything. As a result, he constantly craves affirmation and demands that people kiss his ass — something genuinely strong, confident people don’t do.
• He’s too stupid to see when he’s being played. Because of his ego, insecurities, lack of intellectual curiosity, and his demand that everyone around him tell him what he wants to hear, he’s incredibly easy to manipulate. People willing to play the game can steer this babbling idiot into doing what benefits them, even when it goes against his own self-interests. He’s a useful idiot for anyone willing to tell the toddler what he wants to hear.
• He’s not a very good businessman — he’s a bullshitter, which is what makes him a great con artist. His entire career is built on taking established ideas, slapping his name on them, and trying to sell them as something special. In his entire career, he’s never really created anything unique. He opened casinos, hotels, and launched brands of water and vodka (none of which he actually made — he simply sourced them from companies that did) and branded them as “Trump” whatever.

Look at Trump Mobile — a cellular service that’s just running on T-Mobile’s network (at least the last time I checked), where he’s trying to sell a cheap Android phone made by a Chinese manufacturer at premium prices as some kind of “American-made” luxury product.

At the end of the day, if that joke of a phone ever launches, Trump Mobile will be nothing more than a prepaid phone service with a so-called “flagship” phone that’s really just an overpriced Android device from China. Trump Mobile will never be its own cellular network. It will never produce its own phones. It’s just another con job he’s slapped his name on in hopes of scamming people out of their money.

I don’t give Donald Trump much credit for anything — but I will give him this: he’s likely the most successful con artist the world has ever seen.