In the movie, "Jerry Maguire," the title character, played by Tom Cruise, confesses his love for a woman played by Renée Zellweger, who reciprocates with one of the film's best-known lines: "You had me at 'hello.' "

That got me to wondering how Donald Trump voters would respond if asked for the word that persuaded them to join his cult. What follows are some possible answers and a Trump quote than includes the magic word;

• "Trump had me at 'genius.' " / "I'm a very stable genius."

[I saw something online that claimed Trump's IQ is 150. If true, that would make him, intellectually speaking, one of the all-time underachievers.]

• "Trump had me at 'rich.' " / "I'm really rich!"

[Though apparently not rich enough to pay his lawyers.]

• Trump had me at 'greatest.' " / "I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created."

[The country lost jobs during Trump's years in the White House. Not all of that can be blamed on the pandemic.]

• "Trump had me at 'Einstein.' " / “You know who the smartest person they say in history was? Albert Einstein said [it is] Trump. I agree with him.”

• "Trump had me at 'Epstein.' " / “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do."

[The late Jeffrey Epstein was a notorious sex offender. The above quote was made in 2002 when Trump was asked about his relationship with Epstein.]

• "Trump had me at 'educated.' " / "I'm very highly educated. I know words, I know the best words."

[Trump does know words — about as many as your average fourth grader.]

• "He had me a 'tariff.' " / “The most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff.’ ”

[Trump believes high tariffs will cut our national debt and stimulate our economy. He also believed hydroxy-chloroquine was the cure for the corona-virus.]

• "He had me at 'the Bible.' " / "My favorite book is the Bible."

[Chances are Trump has never read even one page of the Bible, but he loves to hold one if there's a photographer in the vicinity.]

• "He had me at 'Jesus.' " / “If Jesus Christ came down and was the vote counter, I would win California.”

[Not unless Jesus flunked second grade arithmetic. Joe Biden beat Trump in California by 5,104,121 votes.]

• "He had me at 'windmills." / “Their windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before.”

[What he calls "windmills" are wind turbines, and he believes they are supported only by Democrats.]

• "He had me at 'IVF.' "/ "I'm the father of IVF."

[He made this claim during his recent appeal to women voters. Minutes later he referred to in vitro fertilization (IVF) as IVS, and said he'd never heard of it until a conversation with "fantastically attractive" Katie Britt, a senator from Alabama best-known for her laughable response to President Biden's 2024 state of the union message. Trump's alleged conversation with her took place more than forty years after IVF was used used successfully for the first time — in 1978. We already knew Trump's idea of fatherhood is strange, but the above statement is weird even by Trump's standards.]

• "He had me at 'magnets.' " / "All I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets."

[It's doubtful Trump could pass a seventh grade science test, but he said this during a nonsensical rant about the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford which has an electromagnetic launch system.]

• He had me at 'Bagram.' " / "We have Bagram in Alaska, they say it might be bigger than all of Saudi Arabia.”

[Sorry, but Bagram is not an untapped Alaskan oil field but an air base the United States abandoned during its withdrawal from Afghanistan.]

• "He had me at 'cows.' " / “They [Democrats] want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings.”

[Oh, yeah, they also control the weather.]

• "He had me at 'love,' " / "That was a day of love."

[This is what he recently said about his January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.]

Conclusion: "Hello" worked for Jerry Maguire, but the only word I want to hear when it comes to Donald J. Trump, is "goodbye."