This doesn't contradict what I'm saying, but maybe you didn't intend to. The person I knew well and was describing would be described even worse by his own teachers - in fact his teachers insisted he go into classes catering to kids with severe learning disabilities. Which he was beaten for at home, and caused him huge unanswered shame.

But again, he could basically instantly understand the motivations of a room full of strangers, it was uncanny. Even other people I know who are good at it, not like this. And he would get bored and put people in weird situations to entertain himself, using this power. They never saw what he was doing.

Trump is fucking horrible at almost everything. He's not quite dumb though, really clearly not. He's unable and unwilling to direct his mind toward anything other than a specific narrow set of goals, and this person I knew was exactly that way.

But pursuit of one of his goals? He'd fucking get there. He would get there. And it was sometimes horrifying, and often base and mean, but it could just be a lot of egregious flattery too - whatever the situation called for. Scary stuff.