January 23, 2023

Those of us at Duty to Warn should have called Trump a narcissistic sociopath

 In retrospect those of us at Duty to Warn should have called Trump a narcissistic sociopath
By Hal Brown, MSW





Duty to Warn (website) is a group composed of mental health professionals and others formed by clinical psychologist to want about Trump's dangerous pathology. It was originally advocated for this removal from office through the 25th Amendment. It was formed by Dr. John D. Gartner (Wikipedia profile). He was the first mental health professional to describe in the media why Trump fit the criteria for being a malignant narcissist. This was way back in 2017.

Click above to read article

Here's a YouTube report about Gartner's diagnosis:

Click above to view

I also wrote about this in 2020.

Click above to read article

Here's the first page of a web search on DuckDuckGo for Trump malignant narcissist:

https://www.huffpost.com › entry › the-malignant-narcissism-of-donald-j-trump-an-interactive_b_5893ea8de4b02bbb1816b8ef

The Malignant Narcissism Of Donald J. Trump: An Interactive ... - HuffPost

In light of Donald Trump 's unprecedented behaviors during phone conversations with two of our closest allies and his continuing early-morning habit of tweeting out his pathology in the form of foreign policy, I have created this brief checklist describing the signs of one of the most severe expressions of personality as described by mental …

While this was true it wasn't a good descriptor as far as conveying to the general public what Trump was.  My contention ins that we are talking about marketing concepts here, about words that have the most impact on the general public.  Sociopath and sociopathic have more impact than narcissism. Some writers, even those who weren't mental health professionals like George Conway put the later into their articles: NEWSWEEK

Donald Trump's Pathological Narcissism and Sociopathy Leave Him Unable to Function as a Proper President, Says George Conway

Here's another Newsweek article, this one form 2019:

Trump Is a 'Successful Sociopath' and a Predator Who 'Lacks a Conscience and Lacks Empathy,' Says Former Harvard Psychiatrist

My point is that "sociopath" should have been used much more frequently.

The far better term is finally being used:

Click above to read article
There's no way to know whether the labeling many mental health professionals used to describe Trump as a malignant narcissist would have had more impact if he was called a narcissistic sociopath.

The reason I wonder about this is because the the first term emphasizes "narcissist" and 
the second term empathizes "sociopath." 

While "malignant" is well understood as something that is dangerous and often deadly I am not sure combining it with "narcissist" did more than confuse the public who had never heard of malignant narcissism.

Everyone, even diehard Trump cultists, know that Trump is narcissistic. Narcissists can range for being mildly annoying to those they have relationships with to being toxic, or I suppose you could call them malignant. 

There are lots of narcissists in public life. This doesn't make them dangerous. 

The most dangerous people in positions of power and authority are the sociop
aths whether they are narcissists or not. From what I've read about Hitler he wasn't known for being a narcissist. Putin with his proclivity of being photographed shirtless on horseback on the other hand probably has some narcissistic traits but is certainly a ruthless sociopath. Idi Amin was generally photographed with a chestful of medals.






 If American presidents wore uniforms I can imagine Trump having one made which would rival a four star general's. Just about all Trump can do is wear a red baseball hat and sell digital trading cards of photoshops of himself, or (upper left) posting a photo of himself in front of Mt. Rushmore (read story here).



Trump has been compared to the emperor with no clothes in the Hans Christian Anderson.
The fairytale emperor's vice was his vanity. Trump's obsession with his hair and facial makeup has been roundly mocked. The emperor for all his gullibility and grandiose narcissism was depicted as moron but never as a malevolent leader. 

Trump, on the other hand....

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January 22, 2023

Gotta love Truth Social, Trump's gift to prosecutors

 Gotta love Truth Social, Trump's gift to prosecutors
By Hal Brown

In progress

Left to right: Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, Jack Smith, Leticia James

 I read this article in RAWSTORY - it was the inspiration for today's blog.


Excerpt:

Donald Trump's inability to stop talking about his legal problems, and his penchant for floating possible defenses on his social media accounts, will likely come back to haunt him, explained one legal expert.

During an appearance on MSNBC early Sunday morning, former Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner was asked by host Katie Phang about the former president's inability to keep quiet while he is under multiple investigations.

For Trump, "talking" means posting on Truth Social. Whether he actually speaks out loud or types when he makes these posts remains to be reported, but it hardly matters.

I have little doubt that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Fulton County, GA DA Fani Willis , DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith, and NY State AG Leticia James have staffers monitoring all of Trump's Truth Social posts in real time and taking screenshots of them lest he decides to remove them.

Trump's mental health has been progressively deteriorated ever since he lost the election. As much as he psychologically denies the legal jeopardy he's in and his losing his position as the unquestioned Demi-god of the GOP it has to be roiling around somewhere in his psyche. 

He's a self-involved megalomanic and malignant narcissist whose modus operandi to being attacked of disrespected even in fairly mild way is to escalate to a DefCon 1 level counter-attack.

Clinically he exhibits narcissistic rage:

Narcissistic rage can be defined as intense anger, aggression, or passive-aggression when a narcissist experiences a setback or disappointment, which shatters his (or her) illusions of grandiosity, entitlement, and superiority, and triggers inner inadequacy, shame, and vulnerability.

Examples of narcissistic rage range from intense outbursts and sudden fits of anger, to passive-aggressive acts such as simmering resentment, icy silence, deliberate neglect, or cutting sarcasm. What distinguishes narcissistic rage from normal anger is that it is usually unreasonable, disproportional, and cuttingly aggressive (or intensely passive-aggressive), all because the narcissists’ wants and wishes are not being catered to. It is a blow to their superficial, idealized self-image. Reference

He behaves like a child who has problems with impulse control who is having a temper tantrum when he doesn't get his way. Once a tantrum starts there's a point of no return where the child, or adult in people like Trump, is no longer considering the negative consequences.

There was a time when Trump felt, with some justification, that he owned Twitter. Trump posted more than 56,571 tweets before he was banned from Twitter.

After the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago Trump made over 50 posts (he calls the "truths") in one day. 

The former president has written a total of 51 "truths" on the social media platform he set up after getting permanently banned from Twitter, while also sharing dozens more posts from other accounts since early Tuesday morning.

Among Trump's Truth Social posts were attacks on the FBI, including one alleging the agency told Facebook the Hunter Biden "laptop from Hell" story was Russian disinformation "when they knew very well that it was not."

Trump added in the Tuesday night post that the "fake statement" from the FBI changed the outcome of the 2020 election by "millions of votes, and it was by no means the only corruption which took place." NEWSWEEK


 One of the difficulties in prosecuting some cases is the "he said, she said" conflicting testimonies of eye witnesses. If there's no recording of a conversation it can often be left up to a jury to decide whether to believe the witness or the defendant.

In this age of social media a post has become the equivalent of the spoken word. All Trump can do to deny something that was posted of Trump Social is to claim someone else made the post.

This claim would ring hollow in front of a jury. It would be a version of a kid telling his teacher that "the dog ate my homework" and expecting the claim to be believed.

Addendum:

As I finish up today's blog I checked in with my favorite breaking news website, RAWSTORY, and this was on top of their page:


Excerpt:

Early Sunday morning Donald Trump reacted to the mass shooting in Monterrey Park, California that claimed at least ten lives by tieing it to the treatment of those who have been indicted or convicted for participating in the Jan 6 insurrection...

....

RELATED: Trump is handing investigators 'incriminating evidence from heaven': legal expert

Taking to his Truth Social account, he began, "10 dead in California shooting, horrible gun wielding ANTIFA protest against our great police in Atlanta - Nothing will happen to them despite night of rage and destruction."

That was followed by, "Yet our January 6th protestors, over a Rigged Election, have had their lives ruined despite nobody killed except true Patriot Ashli B."

"This situation will be fully rectified after 2024 Election. Thank you!" he concluded.

Note that the article has a link to the story that prompted be to write this blog. Screengrab below:


Thanks, Trump, for making my case!

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January 21, 2023

DOJ assures Jim Jordan will become Jimmy the Snarling Jester Jordan

 DOJ  assures Jim Jordan will become Jimmy the Snarling Jester Jordan 
By Hal Brown



My illustration added this image to one of Jim Jordan which I modified from a color photo.:
There are jesters and there are jesters.
Click below to enlarge. 
Lower right: In Batman, Jester is the son of the Joker and Harley Quinn. His mother sent him to be trained by an assassin in order to fulfill his father's wish to kill the heroes.

I added my illustration to the article 

DOJ signals to Jim Jordan that it won’t share information about pending investigations from The Hill, but it could be on any of the various stories about this announcement from the Justice Department.

I have no doubt that the bloodthirsty Jim Jordan is salivating at the prospect of pouncing wolf-like onto his Democratic Party victims and devouring them with his incisive incisors.

This DOJ announcement is more than a "not so fast buddy boy." The Department of Justice is telling him in no uncertain terms what the J in DOJ stands for. They are telling him that he is not the king of the hill (and The Hill) that he fancies himself.

My understanding is that the DOJ may comply if asked, or subpoenaed, to provide information about other matters besides ongoing investigations, in other words, about concluded investigations. The fly in in ointment for Jordan is this from The Hill:

Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte said in the letter, obtained by Politico on Friday. “Longstanding Department policy prevents us from confirming or denying the existence of pending investigations in response to congressional requests or providing non-public information about our investigations.” 
If I am interpreting this correctly, all the DOJ has to do is refuse to provide information without explaining why they are doing so.

If or when the DOJ provides information I think Jordan will find that he is on a snipe hunt, literally a fool's or jester's errand. They will bluster and bloviate about all the damning evidence of malfeasance they'd uncovered, but like with Benghazi time will show that there was no there .

The same goes for attempts by the Oversight Committee looking into the so-called weaponization of the DOJ,    as they spin their wheels investigating the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the origins of Covid, Big Tech, oh, and the biggest nothing-burger, Hunter Biden. 

No - there - there... not here, not here, not here, not there, not there, not there, sorry dudes and dudettes, not anywhere.

Jim Jordan, the former wrestling champion in the 134 lb. weight class,  and OSU wrestling coach accused of covering up sexual abuse at the college (something that earned him the nickname of Gym Jordan) likes to fleck his muscles. 

Like the typical winning wrestler on the mat, Jordan is very aggressive. I had a couple of friends in high school who wrestled. One of them went on to be a college wrestler. He handily pinned me in about a minute in an intramural wrestling competition. I can attest to the fact that although very aggressive when in a match, they were mild mannered everywhere else.

Not so with Jim Jordan. Not only is he aggressive but obnoxiously so. If he was the least bit likable we might have cause to be a tiny bit worried. The same goes for just about every prominent House Republican. For example, likable in the same sentence with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, and others, is the very definition of an oxymoron. 

Update: On MSNBC commentary, an observation that if DOJ refuses to give some information the House committee can take it to court, but these cases can take months or even years to resolve.
Republican never-Trumper Stewart Stevens just noted what I did mentioning Marjorie Taylor Greene and (I think) Paul Gosar saying that they aren't even likable people and who would want to be sitting next to them.




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