ASSURING YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT TRUMP’S AFFLICTION: MALIGNANT NARCISSISM by Hal Brown, MSW
By retired therapist HAL BROWN, MSW who concluded Trump was a malignant narcissist and therefore psychologically unfit over a year ago. This is a mental condition ( psychiatric disorder) that combined several other diagnoses, extreme narcissism, sociopathy, paranoia, among others. This blog is updated daily with news and commentary about Donald J. Trump with focus on his deteriorating psychological condition.
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump says he's reached a decision on whether to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal — but he won't say what it is.
Board member claimed he spoke
to Trump personally.
Trump was asked several times on Wednesday whether he'd reached a decision. His answer: "I've decided."
And he answered, "I'll let you know," when he was asked for details.
The president made the comments during a meeting in New York with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Trump — in his U.N. speech on Tuesday — called the 2015 nuclear deal an "embarrassment" to the United States.
The president has until Oct. 15 to certify that Iran is complying with the deal. Under the agreement, Iran has halted nuclear development in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Monday, Sept. 18, 2017
He made the cover of Rolling Stone at last!
Excerpt from The Rolling Stone article which includes remarks by one of the founders of Duty to Warn, Dr. John Gartner:
John Gartner, a psychologist who trained residents at Johns Hopkins (ed. note: whose book about Trump just came out today, scroll down), has found a way around both problems (Duty to Warn vs. Goldwater rule). The Goldwater Rule he just ignores, because, he argues, the graveness of the Trump threat renders it quaint. Lots of his colleagues seem to agree, as Gartner has managed to gather more than 62,000 signatures from self-described mental-health professionals attesting that Trump "manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president of the United States."
"We're not talking about a gross psychotic disorder," Gartner says. "We're talking about a way in which people with severe personality disorders can regress to what they call transient psychotic states."
Gartner's argument is relatively simple. Add paranoia, sadism and antisocial behavior to narcissistic personality disorder and you have a new diagnosis: "malignant narcissism." Trump, he says, is no paranoid schizophrenic who walks the streets claiming to be the Son of God – no one "so grossly ill" could be elected. However, the president's increasing tendency to obsess over persecution theories – and not just parrot meaningless stupidities like the inaugural crowd story but seemingly believe them – shows that he's crossing a meaningful diagnostic line into psychotic delusions, common among malignant narcissists.
"We're not talking about a gross psychotic disorder," Gartner says. "We're talking about a way in which people with severe personality disorders can regress to what they call transient psychotic states." He adds, "It's a more subtle kind of psychosis, but it goes over the boundary into psychosis.”
The term malignant narcissist is said to have been invented by Holocaust survivor Erich Fromm, who used it to explain Hitler. It's now become a catch-word on the Internet to describe Trump, and almost inevitably – in much the same way that language from the Steele dossier bled from the Internet to pop culture to the rhetoric of elected officials – it has begun to be circulated within the Democratic Party. California Rep. Jackie Speier actually used the term to describe Trump after Charlottesville, in an interview in which she also called him "unhinged" and "unfit."
Us, the U.S., at the U.N. today.
Updated this evening: Some of the words to describe the speech n MSNBC, HuffPost and other liberal media: Combative, rambling, repetitive, loose cannon, undermine the world, bellicosity and swagger, menacing, astounding rhetoric, saber rattling, dark global vision, contradictory signals to rest of world, most atrocious speech ever given by a president,threatening nuclear war from podium of UN very, never had president bluster about using nuclear weapons, a significant speech, defines the Trump Doctrine, will be studied for years, mentions “rocket man”… and this from VOX:perfect distillation of his hyper-nationalist America First worldview adapted for the world stage. Transgressing boundaries, from The Hill.
Trump’s speech was so over-the-top in its saber-rattling that George W. Bush’s former UN advisor John Bolton praised it as the best speech of Trump’s presidency on Fox News. Ambassador Bolton was followed on the right-wing network by Republican Rep Ron DeSantis of Florida who called Trump’s address a “tour de force.”
"This was the international version of draining the swamp,” DeSantis applauded. And Breitbart:
Donald Trump Gives Full-Throated Defense of ‘America First’ in U.N. Speech
Excerpt: “If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few then evil will triumph,” he said. He also had tough words for North Korea in particular, warning that the U.S. will “totally destroy” the regime if attacked.
“Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime,” Trump said, referring to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
But balancing his defense of “America First” with outreach to the international community, Trump finished his speech on a conciliatory note, calling for the international community to give a resolute, united message to the world:
So let this be our mission and let this be our message to the world: We will fight together, sacrifice together and stand together for peace, for freedom, for justice, for family, for humanity and for the almighty God who made us all.
(BTW he’s not a rocket man, rocket testing is legal under international law, he’s really missile man - ballistic missiles are not rockets.)
Author of “Evil in Modern Thought” says progressives must not shun the concept, especially when it fits so well. An interview with Susan Neiman, the director of the Einstein Forum and a former professor of philosophy at Yale University as well as Tel Aviv University..”
Excerpts:
DeVega: Terms are important. How do you conceptualize evil?
Neiman: I believe there are two ways to look at evil (or goodness, for that matter). One way concerns a person’s internal makeup, what drives him or her, what values they hold, what goals guide them. We all know people who may genuinely have decent values but are too afraid or lazy to do much about realizing them. But Donald Trump is not one of them. Like many others, I have spent considerable time wondering what goes on in this man’s soul -- I believe in principle that everyone has one. However, it is hard to find evidence of anything close to what we normally mean by the word "soul" relative to Donald Trump.
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DeVega: If we agree that Trump is evil, then what are the obligations of citizens in this moment, specifically, and civil society more generally?
Neiman: First and most importantly, to keep insisting that Trump's behavior in the White House is not normal. America is in a state of emergency. Resistance is crucial. The good news is that citizens’ resistance stopped the Muslim ban and the repeal of Obamacare. We need to remember that the opposition has, so far, prevented Donald Trump from doing as much damage as he wants, and we need to intensify it.
Nonviolent resistance to fascism could even have worked in Germany if more people had dared it earlier -- there was some -- and it is certainly needed in America now. We also need to remember that resistance is taking place all over the country; I was happily surprised to find it in Mississippi, where I just spent five months. This spring, people there were already going out and registering voters to get ready for 2018. I know electoral politics seems boring (except in 2008), but we need to understand that sometimes the best way to resist evil is boring.
Everyone should be focused on the midterm elections, which will be crucial. We could get rid of this particular evil if the Democrats could take back Congress. At this moment in time, preserving the rule of law (and the Supreme Court, and a few other institutions) is more important than anything else. Another crucial lesson from German history: The Nazis would have been stopped if the left-wing parties -- who together won the majority of votes in the 1933 elections -- had been united. Instead, they fought each other. Americans with moral values need to unite around those values, and not let ourselves be divided by differences of race or gender or minor political differences. What we are facing now is not a political problem but a moral one.
Press Release: PR Newswire
Skyhorse Publishing releases a new book to explain what John Gartner, PhD says "is psychologically wrong with Donald Trump."
All I Ever Wanted to Know about Donald Trump I Learned from His Tweets: A Psychological Exploration of the President via Twitter Compiled and edited by Rachel Montgomery; Introduction by John Gartner, PhD
NEW YORK, Sept. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As things heat up globally in North Korea and Iran, and with world leaders gathered in his home town this week, many are troubled by Trump's brash behavior, egotism, and disinterest in diplomacy and compromise. Often that fear is amplified by reading what Trump himself writes. All I Ever Wanted to Know about Donald Trump I Learned from His Tweets:A Psychological Exploration of the President via Twitter(Skyhorse Publishing paperback; September 19, 2017; $14.99) provides an eye-opening glimpse into what makes Trump tick . . . and what ticks him off. His tweets have been read, collected, and organized through the first months of his presidency. His tweets demonstrate how he handles adversity and those who resist his bold efforts to make change. How and why have his opinions changed over the years, and what do these changing messages say about him? Psychologist John Gartnerprovides an insightful introduction, contending that Trump exhibits dangerous, narcissistic behavior.
All I Ever Wanted to Know About Donald Trump I Learned from His Tweets: A Psychological Exploration of the President via Twitter - Compiled and edited by Rachel Montgomery; Introduction by John Gartner, PhD - Skyhorse Publishing paperback; September 19, 2017; $14.99
All I Ever Wanted to Know about Donald Trump I Learned from His Tweets is at once a political book, a psychological profile, and an ominous glimpse into our future. As New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said before Inauguration Day, "With all due respect, America cannot afford a twitter presidency.”
All I Ever Wanted to Know about Donald Trump I Learned from His Tweets: A Psychological Exploration of the President via TwitterCompiled and edited by Rachel Montgomery; Introduction by John Gartner, PhD
Skyhorse Publishing paperback, also available as an e-book | On Sale: September 19, 2017 on Amazon
Is this use (Arpaio) of the pardon power constitutional? In most cases, however controversial, courts should not second-guess the president’s use of the pardon power. But when the Constitution says that the president “shall have Power,” that does not meanunlimited power. It means power that is not inconsistent with other parts of the Constitution.
For example, the Constitution says “Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes,” but that doesn’t mean Congress can tax white people at a different rate than black people. The Constitution says the president “shall have Power” to make treaties, but that doesn’t mean he can make a treaty that abolishes freedom of speech.
The power to pardon is limited by the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” That guarantee requires that courts must be able to issue and enforce injunctions to stop constitutional violations by government officials. Otherwise, compliance with a court order would be optional.
In 1925, the Supreme Court upheld President Calvin Coolidge’s pardon of a speakeasy operator who had violated a court order to stop selling liquor during Prohibition. But the court has not considered a pardon for contempt since 1925. And it has never considered a pardon issued to a ranking government official for disobeying a court order to stop a systemic practice of violating individuals’ constitutional rights.
The framers suggested one solution to the prospect of such abuse. During a Virginia debate over whether to ratify the Constitution, George Mason worried that the president might “pardon crimes which were advised by himself.” James Madison replied that a president who did so could be impeached. Trump’s pardon of Arpaio should trigger congressional hearings on whether it constitutes an impeachable offense.
But it strains logic to suggest that, although a president can be removed from office for an unconstitutional pardon, the pardon itself must be judicially enforced. By pardoning Arpaio for his willful disobedience of a court order to stop violating Arizonans’ constitutional rights, Trump has pulled the republic into uncharted waters. Our best guide home is the Constitution. Washington Post
Evening: Reacting to Rachel
Trump, our malignant narcissistic gift to world diplomacy, struts his stuff at the United Nations:
But why is the United Nations so worried about bureaucracy at a time like this?
President Trump got off to an underwhelming start at the U.N. General Assembly on Monday morning. He sat on a panel flanked by various diplomats, including Ambassador Nikki Haley, who introduced him before he delivered some brief remarks, and it would be charitable to describe the welcoming applause as “light.”
Then came the clunker. Haley had told the assembled that the new American president sees “tremendous potential” in the U.N.—a cold enough slap at an organization that’s been around for 72 years and, for all its flaws, has accomplished quite a bit. But Trump followed that dig with a face-splash of ice water, saying that the real “potential” he saw was “right across the street”—a reference to one of his East Side real-estate projects—and noted that the U.N.’s presence was what gave it such potential.
It is clear that Trump is hero among white supremacists: He panders to them, he is slow to condemn them and when that condemnation manifests, it is often forced and tepid. Trump never seems to be worried about offending anyone except Vladimir Putin and white supremacists.
What does that say about him? How can you take comfort among and make common cause with white supremacists and not assimilate to their sensibilities?
I say that it can’t be done. If you are not completely opposed to white supremacy, you are quietly supporting it. If you continue to draw equivalencies between white supremacists and the people who oppose them — as Trump did once again last week — you have crossed the racial Rubicon and moved beyond quiet support to vocal support. You have made an allegiance and dug a trench in the war of racial hostilities.
(ESPN reporter) Hill may have pushed into the realm of hyperbole with a few of her statements — it was Twitter after all — but I judge the spirit of her assessment to be true.
Either Trump is himself a white supremacist or he is a fan and defender of white supremacists, and I quite honestly am unable to separate the two designations.
Excerpt: Without the qualities that laughter both demonstrates and fosters — a willingness to find common ground, the respect for agreed-upon norms and the awareness that we are all only human — Mr. Trump’s attitude toward the presidency is defined by the one characteristic that remains: a lust for power. And this is perhaps the most troubling thing about what passes for a sense of humor with Mr. Trump. Thanks to the power of the internet, there is proof that our president has indeed laughed at least once. This was during a campaign rally in January, when Mr. Trump’s speech was interrupted by a barking dog. (Ed. note: He’s also the first president in memory that doesn’t have a dog or cat.)
“It’s Hillary!” an audience member shouted. And the candidate tilted his head back, opened his mouth wide and laughed without reservation, quite possibly for the first time in his political life.
This documented incidence of Trump laughter is as illuminating as all the grim smiles that preceded it. For they reveal a president who is constantly, endlessly preoccupied with status. A craving for power isn’t unique to the politician currently holding the Oval Office — on the contrary, it is more or less a requirement for entry into the field. But a craving exclusively for power is. It is not too late to undo the damage our humorless president is causing to American democracy. Democrats (and some Republicans, these days) are already thinking about who might replace him in 2020. And if there is one thing all Americans should be able to agree on, it is this: Whomever we nominate to replace President Trump, it is time to put an easy laugh back on top of the ticket.
Preview of The Trump Doctrine and Reactions that haven’t been deleted from his Twitter account (yet)
North Korea's growing ability to potentially reach the continental United States with a ballistic missile, which could be mounted with a miniature nuclear device, has increased the urgency for the Trump administration. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, pointed to the world body's two recent votes to impose more severe economic sanctions on the North as signs that the international community is united in its condemnation.
"North Korea is pretty much cut off from the world," she said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. But she added that military options remain on the table: "If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior and if the U.S. has to defend itself or its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed. We don’t want that. We don’t want war. But something is going to have to be done."
Haley defended Trump's use of Twitter to sound off on international affairs, saying the president can "communicate through any form that he wants." But two days ago, she had told reporters that “it's time to be serious” as Trump and his team prepared for their UNGA debut. Excerpt from Washington Post
Your moment of Zen today.
New to halbrown.org? My photos between days follow a theme. Currently it’s photos I took through the car
window when I first drove from Boston to Portland,
Is this how the President is supposed to treat his First Lady? After Melania Trump introduced Donald Trump, instead of hugging her, he shook her hand and told Melania to ‘go sit down.’ Awkward!
The cringe factor is high in this one. It seems Donald Trump, 71, wanted to keep it professional during his appearance at Joint Base Andrews on Sept. 15. As members of the United States Air Force gathered to hear Trump speak, his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, 47, gave a few remarks before introducing him. As Donald walked on stage, he didn’t lean in for a kiss on a cheek or offer up a hug. Instead, he reached out to shake her hand, all business-like. Yes, he did thank her, but the microphone also picked up Trump saying, “You can go sit down.”
While no one was expecting Donald and Melania to make out at the podium (because it would be even more awkward) it was pretty odd to see Trump treat his wife as if she was some random stranger. “Melania…looks like a mannequin when she stands by [Donald] and he just, like, gives her a formal handshake and sh*t,” one onlooker remarked on Twitter. “LMAO so awkward.” Another pointed out that Donald’s behavior was that of a “patronizing asshole” who treated his wife “like a child, and she seems about as lost.” Most people were just a bit befuddled by this awkward encounter, as it didn’t really come across as they were that into each other.
Excerpt: After watching Trump closely for all these months I think it’s clear that when he’s speaking off the cuff in situations like this, he’s being real, even when he’s lying about the details. He obviously truly believes that the neo-Nazis and the KKK in Charlottesville and elsewhere have gotten a bum rap.
Adds money laundering expert.
He’s not trying to make the Antifa protesters equivalent to white supremacists, not really. He thinks they’re worse than white supremacists. He says they’re “bad dudes” and likes to portray them as a sinister threat to society. He thinks the neo-Nazis and the KKK are more legitimate since “good people” march beside them and they are trying to maintain their “cultural heritage.” He sees their point.
The president of the United States refuses to acknowledge, or is too stupid to understand, that these are movements that killed millions of people in a quest to ensure white supremacy over racial and religious minorities. They are evil incarnate. Nobody on earth is worse than they are.
Quote of the Day: “Does anybody listen to women when they speak around here?”
There were 11 people seated around the table in the White House’s Blue Room, debating the future of the “dreamers” over honey sesame crispy beef, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tried to make her point — only to find the men talking over her.
Pelosi’s interjection, first reported by The Post’s Ashley Parker and confirmed by Pelosi’s office, did the trick. “There was, at last, silence, and she was not interrupted again,” Parker wrote. Washington Post
As more is learned about animal intelligence, it is not understood how much of their behavior is learned or inherited in as yet unknown mechanism. Many of the intelligent behaviors are surprising and have been summarized in a series of posts. Please refer to posts on birds,lizards, ants, termites, and elephants. Perhaps, individual bee intelligence is most surprising, with the ability to have symbolic language, abstract symbols, use the most efficient pathways to many flowers, kaleidoscopic memory of five miles of plants, and the ability to tell others about the exact locations from the five miles of travel. But, possibly, the most amazing is their ability to self-medicate. It is certainly reasonable that if bees can do this, many other animals must also. This post will describe what is the most recent research about animal ability to self-medicate and the possible ways they know how to do this.
Theme: Taken form my car on the way across the country
Friday, Sept. 15, 2017 Late: Best answer to Trump’s question “define the alt-right.” It’s important to remember that there are no card-carrying members of the alt-right. It’s not an official organization, and alignment is self-defined. What’s collectively described as the alt-right is a loose coalition of overwhelmingly white male representatives of various online communities, including anti-women “meninists,” gamers, white nationalists, neo-Nazis and their sympathizers, anti-government types, conspiracists, and dudes who’ve just decided that women and people of color are the reason they don’t have dates or C-suite jobs. The alt-right houses all of those groups, but they might not have come together so seamlessly under its big tent were it not for a unifying loathsome cause. From Kali Holloway, AlterNet Evening edition: More on the psychopathology of Trump:
Below are two excerpts from The Loneliest President. If you want to understand what might have made Trump into the man he is, this is worth reading, from this new excellent psycho-history of Trump.
“He was and is a lonely man,” Jack O’Donnell, a former Trump casino executive, told me.
“One of the loneliest people I’ve ever met,” biographer Tim O’Brien said in an interview. “He lacks the emotional and sort of psychological architecture a person needs to build deep relationships with other people.”
It’s been this way always, because he’s always been foundationally, virulently untrusting. “There’s a wall Donald has that he never lets people penetrate,” a former associate told me. Trump has a dark, dour view of humanity. He considers the world “ruthless,” “brutal” and “cruel.” Through this zero-sum, dog-eat-dog lens, friends aren’t friends—there’s no such thing. “They act nice to your face, but underneath they’re out to kill you,” he wrote in his 2007 book, Think Big. “… they want your job, they want your house, they want your money, they want your wife …” Why he’s like this is the subject of vigorous discussion among psychology experts. The deep-seated influence of his formidable father? The wound of the alcohol-fueled death of his more mild-mannered older brother? Simple genetics? Trump is not self-reflective—“I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see,” he told a biographer several years back—but he can be self-aware. And on this front, he’s been quite clear, and remarkably consistent.
“My business is so all-encompassing I don’t really get the pleasure of being with friends that much, frankly,” he said to one interviewer in 1980.
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The first people who really noticed Trump’s tendency to withdraw were his classmates. As a teenager at New York Military Academy, in upstate Cornwall-on-Hudson, he often disappeared into his solo room in the barracks after dinner. “The reason I went in the first place,” Trump himself would say later, “was that I didn’t get along with a lot of people.” Pictures in yearbooks in the library at the school show Trump morphing from a gangly boy to a sturdy young man, but this much didn’t change: Classmate Doug Reichel characterized him to me as “very distant.”
“I don’t know anyone that he was particularly close to,” said Ernie Kirk, a classmate who is now an attorney in Georgia.
“He was so competitive,”according to a former roommate, “that everybody who could come close to him he had to destroy.”
“You just couldn’t be friends with him,” said Sandy McIntosh, who was two years younger but knew him from home, too, because their families both had cabanas at the Atlantic Beach Club on Long Island. Trump wouldn’t laugh at his jokes, or anybody else’s, McIntosh recalled. “And you think of humor as a basic, empathic way that friendships are formed—and he just didn’t.”
If you liked this article, read another new highly recommended article from Common Dreams, below. It’s an interview with one of the most famous living psychiatrists about his analysis ofTrump.
Afternoon edition:
Click above to read
Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is an American psychiatrist and author of numerous influential books. He is chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory. Read more about him. Excerpt:
Bill Moyers: Some of the descriptions used to describe Trump — narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, delusional disorder, malignant narcissist — even some have suggested early forms of dementia — are difficult for lay people to grasp. Some experts say that it’s not one thing that’s wrong with him — there are a lot of things wrong with him and together they add up to what one of your colleagues calls “a scary witches brew, a toxic stew.”
Solipsistic reality means that the only reality he’s capable of embracing has to do with his own self and the perception by and protection of his own self. And for a president to be so bound in this isolated solipsistic reality could not be more dangerous for the country and for the world.
— Robert Jay Lifton
Dr. Lifton: I think that’s very accurate. I agree that there’s an all-enveloping destructiveness in his character and in his psychological tendencies. But I’ve focused on what professionally I call solipsistic reality. Solipsistic reality means that the only reality he’s capable of embracing has to do with his own self and the perception by and protection of his own self. And for a president to be so bound in this isolated solipsistic reality could not be more dangerous for the country and for the world. In that sense, he does what psychotics do. Psychotics engage in, or frequently engage in a view of reality based only on the self. He’s not psychotic, but I think ultimately this solipsistic reality will be the source of his removal from the presidency.
Moyers: What’s your take on how he makes increasingly bizarre statements that are contradicted by irrefutable evidence to the contrary, and yet he just keeps on making them? I know some people in your field call this a delusional disorder, a profound loss of contact with external reality.
Lifton: He doesn’t have clear contact with reality, though I’m not sure it qualifies as a bona fide delusion. He needs things to be a certain way even though they aren’t, and that’s one reason he lies. There can also be a conscious manipulative element to it. When he put forward, and politically thrived on, the falsehood of President Obama’s birth in Kenya, outside the United States, he was manipulating that lie as well as undoubtedly believing it in part, at least in a segment of his personality. In my investigations, I’ve found that people can believe and not believe something at the same time, and in his case, he could be very manipulative and be quite gifted at his manipulations. So I think it’s a combination of those.
Moyers: How can someone believe and not believe at the same time?
Lifton: Well, in one part of himself, Trump can know there’s no evidence that Obama was born in any place but Hawaii in the United States. But in another part of himself, he has the need to reject Obama as a president of the United States by asserting that he was born outside of the country. He needs to delegitimate Obama. That’s been a strong need of Trump’s. This is a personal, isolated solipsistic need which can coexist with a recognition that there’s no evidence at all to back it up. I learned about this from some of the false confessions I came upon in my work.
With the ridiculous Filibuster Rule in the Senate, Republicans need 60 votes to pass legislation, rather than 51. Can't get votes, END NOW!
FRIDAY, SEP 15, 2017 04:51 AM PDT
I was also dumbstruck by Schumer apparently
believing that Trump likes him. Hasn’t he
listened to the Duty to Warn therapists
telling him the empathy lacking Trump
only likes people that fawn over him,
or who he can use to his own ends.
Since his inauguration, Trump has chained himself to these characters (Ann Coulter, Rep. Steve King, Steve Bannon, Sean Hannity, Breitbart) deep inside an ideological cave where two-thirds of the American electorate never venture. That political strategy predictably led to a 34-percent approval rating at the start of this month. Now that the president has managed to go a week without aggressively working to provoke more than 200 million Americans, he will be on the receiving side of talk radio’s wrath. But if these political entertainers really believe that Trump’s political base is going to blow apart over a deal most Americans support, they are as clueless about Trump’s political base as Clinton was.
Trump’s superglue hold over his supporters has flummoxed conservative and liberal commentators alike since he first rode down his golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015. Others declared his political career “over!” after he insulted, variously, Mexicans, John McCain, Megyn Kelly, Fox News, body-shamed women, Access Hollywood viewers and a host of others on his trail to the presidency. But many voters sided with the bellicose celebrity they have known since the 1980s. It’s the personality that keeps them, not the policies.
And that Trump base is not going anywhere now. They are not Coulter’s book-buying base, they are not King’s Republican voting base and they will never be Bannon’s populist base. Trump’s base is Trump’s base, period, and there is nothing that Hannity, Breitbart or King will ever be able to do to change that fact. Trump fans stick with Trump through thick and thin. If you don’t believe me, just ask President Clinton.
Excerpt - a psychological theory of why Trump is the way he is:
Now the president’s chaotic and self-defeating gyrations suggest less method than supposed. It may not be madness, but what we are witnessing bears the hallmarks of disorganized attachment.
Disorganized attachment can result when a child’s primary caregivers are simultaneously a source of safety and danger. Such parents are often abusive, frightened themselves, or operating in a dissociated manner from their own unresolved traumas. What attachment researcher Mary Main describes as the child’s dilemma of “fright without solution” leads to a collapse of strategy. This and other characteristics of disorganized attachment–erratic behavior, hostility, aggression, lack of empathy, problems with trust and truth, an incoherent narrative, and viewing the world as an unsafe place–describe the president.
Trump grew up amid material indulgence and emotional harshness. His father, notoriously demanding, critical, and controlling, mercilessly targeted vulnerability. The young Donald Trump, already constitutionally inclined toward aggression, so thoroughly identified with the aggressor that he was sent away to military school at age 13. Trump describes the tough and often physically abusive treatment there admiringly. Recapitulating the dynamic of turning to those who literally and figuratively whip him into shape, he’s now stocked his administration with generals.
Paradoxically, Trump the boy—for whom safety and danger were fused—became President Trump in part by promising security to those fearful of economic and cultural displacement in a changing and often frightening world. Under the authoritarian’s guise of powerful protector, he fans and quells fear simultaneously, pitting one group against another. Just as he seeks but can never find safety, he promises but never delivers it.
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Click above_Just published today in The Guardian
Excerpt:
For human beings today, dominance and prestige compete with each other as the two primal expressions of leadership.
When it comes to US presidents, we expect to see a bit of both.
For Trump, however, it is dominance all the way through.
Click above: Cover article from June, 2016
An especially effective dominance mechanism for the alpha chimp is the charging display. The top male essentially goes berserk and starts screaming, hooting, and gesticulating wildly as he charges toward other males nearby. Pandemonium ensues as rival males cower in fear and females grab their little ones and run for cover.
Once the chaos ends, there is a period of peace and order, wherein rival males pay homage to the alpha, visiting him, grooming him, expressing various forms of submission.
Trump’s incendiary tweets are the human equivalent of a charging display. Designed to intimidate his foes and rally his submissive base, these verbal outbursts reinforce the president’s dominance by reminding everybody of his wrath and his force. When the alpha chimp charges, you cannot help but take note – with your ears and with your eyes.
Look at Mr Trump. What do you see? He is physically big and dynamic. His face gives the impression of a volcano about to explode. And explode he does, with regularity. Trump is more overtly aggressive than any political figure in the United States today, so aggressive, so insulting, so egregiously denigrating that you thought he might not be bluffing when, for example, he threatened to “lock Hillary up”, or when he warned North Korea that it “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen”.
Hillary Clinton will be on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight. This is what is likely to be covered: 1) dishing out payback and 2) biggest revelations. Department of Revising History
The Trump administration has a lot in common with AHS, given its penchant for wealthy sociopaths, and characters driven by blind ambition or naked greed. Like Trump’s policies, AHSoften combines the fears of queer people, poor people, black people, disabled people and women into an overwhelming cavalcade of nightmares. And while an episode of AHS can seem like three episodes of a regular show, a single week of Trump-era news can feel like a month’s worth of headlines.
This administration is a rollercoaster of outrages, a spinning teacups ride of horrors: We should be afraid of Russia! No, North Korea! No, wait, white supremacists! Does anyone even remember ISIS? Don’t forget, climate change will kill us all—but not before we lose our health care or get gunned down for minor traffic violations. It doesn’t end, and it’s all too fast. It’s overwhelming. It fills us up. And nothing captures that bloated and confused terror better than an episode of American Horror Story.
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In the show, Ally (Paulson) tells her therapist that this election has affected her the same way 9/11 did, and she’s not alone. Plenty of therapists have reported a spike in their clients’ anxieties since the election. For a large number of people in this country, Trump’s election is a trauma. All horror is about trauma—the fears it engenders, the way we fight through it. It cannot be buried, avoided or ignored. The only way out is through. So we work our way through it in the nightmare dream logic of horror. Horror has a long history of working out cultural fears through allegory and, Boy Howdy, are we dealing with some cultural fears right now. Like, all of them. The fears we once thought buried, the horrors we’ve too long ignored, they’ve all come back like Freddy Kruger.
Kai (Evan Peters), a blue-haired Trump supporter bent on becoming a one-man hate-crime wave, says in the premiere that America has chosen fear over freedom, and though that statement’s been true since 9/11, it’s gained power since Trump came on the scene. Trump appeals to the fears of his base: their fear of terrorism, their xenophobia, their fear of poverty, their fear of being passed over, forgotten, replaced. Likewise, Trump embodies the fears of his detractors: white supremacist, narcissist, sociopath, abuser, bully, spoiled child, senile old man, fascist dictator, everyone sees something different when they look at him but they all see something chilling. Trump has become a mirror of our own worst fears.
Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017 MSNBC Evening round-up: David Corn on Rachel Maddow now about this article:
Harvard professor and psychoanalyst on the "antiquated" Goldwater rule and our president's "serious mental illness”
Excerpts:
Clinically, if we were to look at the checklist for sociopathy, what are some of the indicators that Trump is presenting?
It is people who lie and cheat. Everybody lies some of the time, but in this instance we mean people who lie as a way of being in the world, to manage relationships and also to manage your feelings about yourself. People who cheat and steal from others. People who lack empathy … the lack of empathy is a critical aspect of it. People who are narcissistic.
Trump’s case of narcissism is particularly severe because he also is out of touch with reality whenever he becomes upset. When he says, “I had the largest crowd at an inauguration in history,” it does not matter that you can tell him that it is not true, he still insists on it. Well, that is very troublesome because what it means is that he needs to believe it. He is able to give up reality in exchange for his wished-for belief. Sometimes we call that a delusion. We have not used that word much with Donald Trump because that does get confused with people who think that they are Napoleon. But Trump has a fluid sense of reality, which is a sign of a very sick individual.
Sociopathy itself is a sign of a very sick individual, someone with a lying, cheating and emotional disorder. The intersection of those two occurs in sociopathy. It is not just bad behavior that people have to lie and cheat the way he does, it is an incapacity to treat other people as full human beings. That is why his focus is on humiliating others to aggrandize himself, as he did in the Republican primaries when he was debating and calling people names. The same thing applies to Hispanic immigrants and separating the children from their parents. That is a very, very serious mental and emotional problem. Normal people have normal empathy. It is part of being a human being. Lying and cheating and humiliating others and grinding them into dust in order to triumph is not just bad behavior. It is a serious mental illness.
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The best diagnosis for Trump is that he is a malignant narcissist. It contains the narcissistic part which is no big deal alone — lots of people are narcissistic — but the malignant part is the sociopathy dimension. These terms suggest that Trump is a very primitive man. He is also a man who has a fundamental, deep psychological defect. It is expressed in his inability to empathize with others and his lack of genuine loyalty to anyone. You will notice that Trump wants everyone to be loyal to him, but he is loyal to nobody.
It is a one-way street. Trump appears to have no sense of social obligation or reciprocity.
Yeah, that is right. He has no sense of that because it is all about him. That is narcissistic, but it is much worse than the ordinary person with narcissistic personality. You know, I have known lots of people like that and none of them are as evil or dangerous as Donald Trump because they do not have the sociopathy part. They may be oriented towards themselves, they may be self-centered, they may care mostly about themselves. But when it comes right down to it, they have some compassion, they have a conscience. But not Donald Trump. That is the malignant part. So yes, you want to say he is narcissistic personality, yes. Malignant narcissism? Yes. Sociopathy? Yes. Antisocial personality? Yes. Paranoia? Absolutely. He is quite paranoid but again, if you look at it from underneath, it all fits together.
Why is he paranoid? He’s paranoid because … he needs to defend himself, his self-esteem, by saying that other people are bad. “You are the bad guy, not me. You are the one attacking me, I have no wish to attack.” He is extremely paranoid and it edges into delusion. He does not really know what the truth is, at least at those moments. All these descriptive labels are true. If you put them all together, you have got a picture of Donald Trump.
If you understand the man you understand what you are dealing with, and I don’t think he is at all different from these tyrants in the past. I don’t know that he is any different from the people he admires.
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What do you think will happen with Trump’s presidency?
I think one of two things will happen and maybe both. First of all, the greatest risk to us right now is that there will be another “Reichstag fire”-type event.
The more desperate Trump becomes, the more he needs to have a crisis so the country will rally around him. If I had to pinpoint it I would say he is going to start bombing North Korea. Unfortunately, the North Korean leader is just as sick as Trump. The two of them are like little boys on a playground but much worse, because little boys are not evil, they are just aggressive. The second thing is — and this is the Republican calculation — at what point do I need to abandon Donald Trump in order to preserve my political career? I think that is exactly what is going through the minds of the Republican Party leadership right now. They have to wait for a shift in public opinion and it is coming. Charlottesville was one major event and there will be others. Then I think they will go to Trump and say, “We are going to impeach you or we are going to apply the 25th Amendment.”
But in the end he will simply cut bait. He will leave other people to clean up the mess. Trump will resign and say, “I am still the best and the only savior, and these evil people and their evil media have forced me out.” He will keep his constituency, he’ll leave with honor in his own mind and by the way, keep his businesses.
I watched my president perorate at the Pentagon and all I could think as he held forth about heroism on the 16th anniversary of 9/11 was how did we end up with Humpty Dumpty.
It was Humpty Dumpty, of course, who declared: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” At least Humpty Dumpty said it without that repetitive thumb-to-stubby-forefinger gesture of our esteemed leader.
Words cascade from that pinched mouth and they mean nothing, because when a man of moral emptiness tries to exhort a nation to moral greatness the only thing communicated is pitiful, almost comical, hypocrisy.
Between a hero and a huckster, between speaking and mouthing, the distance is great. Watching the esteemed leader’s head turning jerkily, like an old electric fan, from teleprompter to teleprompter, I almost felt pity. His is the Age of Indecency.
President Trump seems lonely in his evident unfitness. Between him and his wife Melania I imagine what John Lanchester once described as “one of those silences which can only be incubated by at least two decades of attritional intimacy.” Well, they’ve known each other for 19 years.
Monday, Sept. 11, 2017
Late breaking - Monday night First of Two.
On Lawrence O’Donnell, the Wall Street Journal (“Some Trump Lawyers Wanted Kushner Out”) reports that earlier in the summer some of Trump’s lawyers aired concerns about Jared Kushner and suggested he leaved the White House. Some of the attorneys said that others in the White House could be implicated in the Russia probe. Lawyers drafted a statement that was never used in anticipation of a Kushner exit.
Member of President Donald Trump's legal team wanted his son-in-law Jared Kushner to resign from his position as a senior adviser because of his controversial meetings with Russian nationals during the election and his initial failure to disclose them on his security clearance form, according to the Wall Street Journal.Business Insider article continued
Second big evening story
This Trump and Russia news was covered on Rachel tonight saying that it got lost in the Friday news dump during the 24 hr. coverage of Irma. Reuter’s and then Inquisitr got it out. Do you think Trump is a match for this Russian hardliner?
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s newly installed ambassador to Washington said on Friday that he had a warm and constructive meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian news agencies reported.
“I was received by President Trump, I presented my credentials. For my part I said that we are looking forward to an improvement in the relations between our two countries,” Tass news agency quoted the ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, as saying.
“President Trump received me in a warm and friendly way ... The atmosphere was very genial, constructive and welcoming. At least, that was my personal feeling,” Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Antonov as saying.
“We, together with his colleagues, his staff, agreed to continue our cooperation.”
“I said that I look forward to working with the U.S government in the area of Russian-American mutual interests. And I said that, as far as Russia is concerned, we are ready to do that, we’re ready to take concrete steps.”
Antonov took over as ambassador from Sergei Kislyak, whose contacts with members of Trump’s campaign team made him a central figure in the row over Russian influence on last year’s U.S. presidential election.
From Charles Blow’s Should Survival in Trump’s Hell: You could stay in hell for a little while if you knew that you were going to get out.
My mother always told me that when I was going through something tough and dispiriting. It was her way of saying that trouble doesn’t last forever, that even in your darkest place, hold fast to the hope and the light, that though today you are in the valley, tomorrow you shall scale the peak.
Well, Mama, this is hell. Indeed, Donald Trump’s America is the Ninth Circle. Charles Blow, Link Below.
Excerpt: It is hard to witness a president so obsessed with the obliteration of the legacy of his predecessor that he is attempting to undo that legacy with every stroke of his pen.
It is hard to witness a bully attack traditionally marginalized communities, one after the other.
It is hard to witness a family of corruption besmirching the presidency, the country and America’s standing in the world.
It is hard to witness the dismantling of basic norms, the dismissal of propriety and the devaluation of truth and honesty.
It is like being injured and having the offender repeatedly pound the wound before it can properly heal.
Like many Americans, I try my best to do the small affirming things in my family and in my community that express my love and reaffirm my values. I spend a bit more time in museums and give a bit more space for the activities that celebrate the creative imagination and that express the long tumultuous span of the human condition. I try to nourish my soul so that it will survive, because I know that the fight is not finished.
We are in hell. We have to remember that one day we will get out.
Like The Twilight Zone, I am one of millions who never missed an episode to The Prisoner.
Rarely does a television show portend a future such that you think that some degree of magical fortune-telling was reverse engineered into how it was made. Premiering 50 years ago in early September, “The Prisoner,” both starring and created by Patrick McGoohan, certainly fits that bill — extra certainly, you might say, during these 2017 times.
McGoohan had starred in the thriller “Danger Man,” an espionage series, from 1960-62, before hitting upon the idea of something rather further out with “The Prisoner,” which would comprise 17 episodes about a man who resigns his job in London, only to be gassed in his apartment moments thereafter, and taken away to an island seaside community called, simply, the Village.
The inhabitants of the Village all have numbers rather than names, with McGoohan’s character being Number Six. His chief adversary is Number Two, which prompts the famous query of “Who is Number One?” Who is Number One indeed. CONTINUED
Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017
Updated this evening: Some of the words to describe the speech n MSNBC, HuffPost and other liberal media: Combative, rambling, repetitive, loose cannon, undermine the world, bellicosity and swagger, menacing, astounding rhetoric, saber rattling, dark global vision, contradictory signals to rest of world, most atrocious speech ever given by a president,threatening nuclear war from podium of UN very, never had president bluster about using nuclear weapons, a significant speech, defines the Trump Doctrine, will be studied for years, mentions “rocket man”… and this from VOX: perfect distillation of his hyper-nationalist America First worldview adapted for the world stage. Transgressing boundaries, from The Hill.
Excerpt: 
“It’s Hillary!” an audience member shouted. And the candidate tilted his head back, opened his mouth wide and laughed without reservation, quite possibly for the first time in his political life.
As more is learned about animal intelligence, it is not understood how much of their behavior is learned or inherited in as yet unknown mechanism. Many of the intelligent behaviors are surprising and have been summarized in a series of posts. Please refer to posts on birds, lizards, ants, termites, and elephants. Perhaps, individual bee intelligence is most surprising, with the ability to have symbolic language, abstract symbols, use the most efficient pathways to many flowers, kaleidoscopic memory of five miles of plants, and the ability to tell others about the exact locations from the five miles of travel. But, possibly, the most amazing is their ability to self-medicate. It is certainly reasonable that if bees can do this, many other animals must also. This post will describe what is the most recent research about animal ability to self-medicate and the possible ways they know how to do this.
Below are two excerpts from The Loneliest President. If you want to understand what might have made Trump into the man he is, this is worth reading, from this new excellent psycho-history of Trump. 
It’s been this way always, because he’s always been foundationally, virulently untrusting. “There’s a wall Donald has that he never lets people penetrate,” a former associate told me. Trump has a dark, dour view of humanity. He considers the world “ruthless,” “brutal” and “cruel.” Through this zero-sum, dog-eat-dog lens, friends aren’t friends—there’s no such thing. “They act nice to your face, but underneath they’re out to kill you,” he wrote in his 2007 book, Think Big. “… they want your job, they want your house, they want your money, they want your wife …” Why he’s like this is the subject of vigorous discussion among psychology experts. The deep-seated influence of his formidable father? The wound of the alcohol-fueled death of his more mild-mannered older brother? Simple genetics? Trump is not self-reflective—“I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see,” he told a biographer several years back—but he can be self-aware. And on this front, he’s been quite clear, and remarkably consistent.
Lance Dodes is one of the prominent Duty to Warn therapists. He was on Lawrence O’Donnell with Dr. John Gartner.
It is people who lie and cheat. Everybody lies some of the time, but in this instance we mean people who lie as a way of being in the world, to manage relationships and also to manage your feelings about yourself. People who cheat and steal from others. People who lack empathy … the lack of empathy is a critical aspect of it. People who are narcissistic.
Excerpt:
Link above. Here’s an excerpt from Reuter’s:
From Charles Blow’s Should Survival in Trump’s Hell: You could stay in hell for a little while if you knew that you were going to get out.
Excerpt: It is hard to witness a president so obsessed with the obliteration of the legacy of his predecessor that he is attempting to undo that legacy with every stroke of his pen.
It is hard to witness a bully attack traditionally marginalized communities, one after the other.
Author of “Evil in Modern Thought” says progressives must not shun the concept, especially when it fits so well. An interview with Susan Neiman, the director of the Einstein Forum and a former professor of philosophy at Yale University as well as Tel Aviv University..” 
Before Dems Get All Chummy with Trump, Let's Remember What a Disgusting President He Has Been So Far
