Veteran conservative writer Kevin D. Williamson branded President Donald Trump “stupid and lazy,” arguing that the president’s shortcomings may be the only thing preventing him from inflicting much more damage on the country.
Williamson, a national correspondent for The Dispatch and former writer and editor at National Review, made the comments in an interview with Corey Nathan on the Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other podcast, released Tuesday.
“But the saving grace of the Trump administration and Donald Trump as a politician has always been that he’s stupid and lazy,” Williamson said, adding, “And the fact that he’s stupid and lazy means that he doesn’t do as much harm as he could.”
The conservative columnist believes that a more intelligent and capable politician with Trump’s popularity and political ideology would be a far greater threat.
“An intelligent, energetic person in his position with his kind of demagogic abilities and his cult of personality could do a lot of damage,” he said.
Williamson used Woodrow Wilson as an example, stating that he was an intelligent man who did considerable damage but without the celebrity of Trump.
Williamson also accused Trump’s administration of wasting the opportunity to make major changes through Congress, stating that they don’t have a “legislative agenda,” other than the Big Beautiful Bill.
He said the Republicans could have gone in and rewritten sections of the tax code or legally altered US trade policy instead of just imposing tariffs “willy-nilly.”
He also criticized Democrats, who he believes don’t have much of an agenda either, adding that “although there are some things that they’d like to change, but they haven’t spelled that out in any kind of detailed way.”
But Williamson’s criticism didn’t stop with Trump’s style of governing. He was also warning that the country’s constitutional system was facing a serious test in terms of war powers and congressional oversight.
Referring to the war in Iran and US military operations in the Caribbean, he questioned whether Congress was still exercising the power conferred upon it by the Constitution.
“The real question is, does Article 1, does the Constitution still matter?” he asked.
Williamson predicted that if the Democrats win the Senate, they will “certainly” impeach Trump, which will drag out for the rest of his term. However, he doubts that they will get enough Republicans to vote with them.
Despite that, the conservative author believes that the president should face the legislative process.
“In addition to whatever impeachment there is, and there should be, by the way. There’s like 11 good reasons to impeach Donald Trump.”