President-elect Donald Trump showed "real intelligence" and "shrewdness" handling the media during his first post-election news conference, veteran newsman Dan Rather says.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the former "CBS Evening News" anchor, who now anchors for Axis-TV, said he last interviewed Trump in 2000 for "60 Minutes" — and "he hated it."
"It's a challenge interviewing him," Rather said. "This I know about Donald Trump: He is not a dumb person. I know a lot of people who say, 'Dan, if he's not a dumb person, why does he do these dumb things?'
"In his own way, he has a real intelligence. It's a shrewdness. Cunning, if you will. Dumb people do not get elected president. I can certainly agree he's not widely read. He knows very little about foreign policy.
"There's a certain intelligence about Donald Trump and we saw it in the news conference. It was a smart performance politically on his part."
He was less flattering in a Facebook post after the Wednesday news conference.
"President Asterisk," Rather called Trump, refers to the asterisk next to President Richard Nixon's name for resigning while in office.
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