Effective and brilliant perhaps, but disingenuous, cynical and exploitive.
Here is Trump in a saner moment making the case Rubio mentioned in the debate.
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Trump on if he were told by intelligence agencies of Saddam WMDs
I would have been a lot more certain that he had those weapons of mass destruction. He [Saddam] obviously overplayed his hand. All he had to do was say was, “Come in and take a look,” and he would still be running that country.
http://humanevents.com/2011/03/14/trump-unplugged/
Saddam Hussein believed we already knew the truth. He had more faith in the US intelligence agencies than they actually deserved.
Saddam conducted a lot of mock drills and communications designed to make it look like they had working nukes. The effort was designed to discourage the Iranians from messing with him. After all, the two nations had fought a war in which one million people were killed, and Iran represented a very grave threat to Iraq.
Unfortunately our intelligence agencies were incompetent and stupid. (Ran by Ivy League Liberals.) We really believed he had working nukes, or was very close to developing them.
Saddam made the mistake of believing we had accurate information.