I typically associate the word genius with someone like Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs. I don’t append the word to someone who arranges for dissidents to accidentally fall from windows, someone who chooses to wage war on peaceful people. So when Trump uses it to describe Putin – and, this weekend, he added the word smart – it smacks of a radically new dictionary definition. Fine, let’s go with it:

A “genius” is someone who turns a former comedian into a Churchillian global hero.

A “genius” is someone who unites NATO, the European Union, the G-7, heck the entire western alliance, against him.

A “genius” is someone who rouses normally passive Germany to hike its defense spending and send military assistance to the genius’ underdog enemy.

A “genius” is someone who prompts the Dutch to send anti-aircraft missiles to the underdog. (The Dutch, for Pete’s sake.)

A “genius” is someone who rouses the traditionally neutral Swedes to send 5000 anti-tank missiles to the underdog. (The Swedes, for Pete’s sake.)

A “genius” is someone who even alienates his fellow authoritarian leaders in Turkey and Hungary.

A “genius” is someone who inspires the leaders of almost every major economy – including Japan, Australia, South Korea, and Singapore – to work in tandem to block the genius’ country from accessing the global financial markets and the international payments system.

A “genius” is someone who crashes the value of his own country’s currency. The ruble, when measured against the dollar, is on its way to being virtually worthless.

A “genius” is someone who sends foreign investors fleeing for the exit – most notably, BP, his country’s largest foreign investor, which is shelving its investment in the Rosneft oil company and puling out of the country entirely, at an estimated cost of $25 billion.

A “genius” is someone who goads FedEx and UPS to suspend all services inside his own country.

A “genius” is someone who prompts virtually the entire world to turn away his country’s commercial planes.

A “genius” is someone whose fat-cat pals wind up getting stripped of their assets and money. (Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, tweeted: “He has ruined their lives – damaged their fortunes, damaged the future of their kids, and may now have turned society away from them. They were living just fine until a week ago. Now, their lives will never be the same.”)

A “genius” is someone who inspires people in his own country, living under his authoritarian rule, to nevertheless stage antiwar protests in 53 cities.

A “genius” who was supposedly the world’s preeminent propagandist winds up being outfought in the court of public opinion by a capable President of the United States, who in the prelude to invasion, proactively nixed the genius’ lies by releasing (and sharing with allies) accurate declassified intel about the genius’ true intentions. Also, this “genius” is powerless to rein in social media; on TikTok, feisty Ukrainians are posting videos that teach their peers how to operate abandoned Russian tanks.

A “genius” is someone who expects that his underdog enemy will speedily surrender, only to discover that his own soldiers are being tagged and body-bagged, bogged down in fierce battles for every major city, unable even to control the skies, as each passing day further unites the world against him.

A “genius” is someone who inspires a former beauty queen – Miss Ukraine 2015 – to take up arms and rally her fellow citizens against the invaders: “Let’s help them go straight to hell.”

A “genius” is someone who reduces his most prominent American lapdog to a mutt with no bark and no bite. On Saturday, when Fox News asked him how he’d be handling this war better than President Biden, he replied: “Well, I tell you what, I would do things, but the last thing I would want to do is say it.”

So I’ll say it. If Ukraine falls, the job of puppet Putin president is ready and waiting.