Donald Trump keeps telling us he is the smartest man in human history . . . or words to that effect.

He went to the “best schools,” he knows “the best words,” he has a “good brain,” he is the “best dealmaker” in the world.

With that noggin full of high-powered gray matter, he says he depends on his “gut” to help him make decisions. His gut determines where to lead the country. Trump’s gut is his — and if you don’t mind my using this term from the recent past — “lodestar” in assessing how to decide key matters. Trump says he depends more on his gut than he does on anyone else’s brains.

What is wrong with all of this?

My belief all along has been that smart people do not brag about their smarts. They don’t feel a need to tell the rest of us lower life forms about their brilliance. They are quietly confident in their knowledge, and in their ability to acquire knowledge.

I know this intimately. Not because I’m particularly smart. I know it because I have some members of my family as well as some good friends who fit that category.

I’ll allude briefly to a family member. He is a retired economist. He is as deep and well-rounded on many matters as anyone I have encountered over my nearly 69 years on Earth. He is a Renaissance man of the first order, a major-league Brainiac. Has he ever bragged openly about his brain, his IQ, his hefty bag of knowledge? Not in my presence. Granted, I haven’t spent every waking hour of every day with this person, but I feel quite confident in asserting that he doesn’t need to tell anyone he knows how smart he is; they know it already.

I want to mention all of this to remind us all that the president of the United States, who takes phony pride in his brilliance is, um, how shall I say it . . . lying!

He is running from the reality of what he surely must know at some level, that he is in over his head, that he is whiffing daily on matters that — for someone as brilliant as he claims to be — should be easy to handle, to resolve.

I also know some folks who are of considerable financial means. They don’t brag about their wealth, unlike Trump, who continually tells us that he is a self-made gazillionaire. But . . . is he? Really and truly?

I don’t know whether he is as rich as he says he is. My hunch is that he isn’t. I am more comfortable assessing whether he is as smart as he claims to be.

I feel confident in saying that his brain isn’t nearly as “good” as he suggests it is. A cursory reading of the utterly mangled syntax in those Trump tweets tells me all I need to know to make that determination.