Morning Joe says Trump's "fretting" about prison, but is he even capable of fretting?

 

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

There was a discussion on Morning Joe where Joe Scarbourgh said that there were reports that Donald Trump was "privately frettiing" over the propsect of going to prison.

Click to view

There it is, Trump "fretting" actually made the chryon so those who had their sound muted could see it. If Trump had the show on one of several TVs in his bedroom he could see it. He might have decided to turn off the sound on Fox News and watch MSNBC.

Here's some of what Joe said:

"He's the most insecure guy on the face of the earth behind that facade. He has to know what his fiercest defenders on Fox News say. Ninety-one counts – if he goes 90-1, he's going to jail for the rest of his life, 90-1. He could win 90 and lose one, every one of those counts, basically, at Donald Trump's age, that equals a life sentence, so, yeah, the guy is worried.

.... 

"I mean, we'd be throwing people's names around – 91 counts, every one of them is a life sentence. The guy, obviously, is cracking. I think he's losing it, which is why the last thing he wants to do, the last thing his lawyers want him to do, is go out and debate. He may give admissions, and his political people don't want him to lose his mind onstage." 

Trump wants to consider himself to be a rock star. Havig a big article in Rolling Stone is a milestone in a performer's career. I rather doubt Trump is happy that he and is mugshot are here:

There it is, that pesky word again.

I've heard Joe mention that he was aware that Donald Trump sometimes watched the show. I wonder what he would have thought if he watched this segment. Joe, Mika, and the crew have called Trump lots of things but saying he's insecure and that he's fretting over the chance of going to prison may get to him more than being called a buffoon or a clown.

As one of the top 1000 mental health experts (but then who's counting) who has publically expressed their opnion about Trump's psychopathology I feel complelled to correct the Morning Joe panel. 

If Trump was fretting it would be a rare indication that he had lapsed, not into florid psychosis, but into the realm of mental health.

If Trump worked in academia he'd be the Dean of Denial and be in charge of assuring that students only were taught things that they were comfortable with.

Photo adapted from illustration in Reed College students stage multi-day protest over video that showed a professor making racist remarks

This isn't the first time pundits have ascribed normal psycholgical reactions to Donald Trump. For example this was from March:

Trump is 'very anxious' about being finger-printed and asking for bail in Manhattan: NYT's Haberman

Plain and simple we don't know what Trump is experiencing. Is he anxious? Is he fretting? We just don't know. 

Denial is the most primative or basic psychological defense mechanism. Freud first postulated it as a way some people dealt with facing extremely difficult facts of their personal reality:

Denial is a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

The subject may use:

• simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
• minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
• projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility by blaming somebody or something else

Wikipedia

You can see Trump using all three types of denial. The more he uses simple denial the more psychogically impaired he is. Judging a the capacity for reality testing is a measure used in psychology to determine how dysfuntional a person is. It is called reality testing and defined as follows:

Reality testing is the psychotherapeutic function by which the objective or real world and one's relationship to it are reflected on and evaluated by the observer. This process of distinguishing the internal world of thoughts and feelings from the external world is a technique commonly used in psychoanalysis and behavior therapy, and was originally devised by Sigmund Freud. Wikipedia

Most of you are familiar the Kübler-Ross model of grief, which describes the five emotions that people experience when they cope with death. (Wikipedia). The first stage is denial. Pyshologically healthy people go on throough the next three stages, anger, bargaining, and depression before reaching the final stage of acceptance.

Denial is the first because it is the very most basic defense. 

I wonder if we'll see Trump go through these stages if he is sentenced to prison. I have my doubts because he is far from being a psychogically healthy person.

If Trump is anxious, if he's fretting, it would mean reality is percolating into his conscious awareness. If he's repressing this thoughts and feelings he is at risk of them manifesting themselves in somatic ways. 

I'm a clinical social worker and not a physician but I think I am on firm ground in speculating that as the chance of being incarcerated increases Trump is at higher risk of succumbing to some of the stress related physical illnesses.

Update:

Far be it from me to dispute Mary Trump who is the only mental health professional who actually knows (or knew) Donald Trump up close and personal, buit I think she is describing him as if he was normal.

I doubt Donald Trump reads what his psychologist neices writes about him. If he reads this piece here's what I think would bother him the most (in bold)

"I’m sorry Donald, but calling Charles Koch a 'very stupid, awkward, and highly overrated globalist,; is a clear sign to me… You must be getting nervous that Koch has already raised more than $70 million to oppose you in the Republican presidential primary. And there’s more coming," she said. "I can only imagine how off-the-charts your anxiety is especially since you know there is so much more trouble coming your way. Your childish name calling can only take you so far."

Mary Trump added: 

"Even more transparent than your anxiety is your jealousy. Charles Koch is at least 24x richer than you. You really shouldn't let your emotions take over like this Donald. Your pattern of name-calling and grievance is wearing thin and it just makes you look like the weak loser you are.

Koch isestimated to be worth about $60 billion making him the 20th richest person in the world. Forbes estimates Trump's worth as a paulty $2 ½ billion.

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Prolonged stress puts your body in a continuous state readiness for physical action. When your body has no time to re-establish equilibrium, it becomes overworked and your immune system weakens, making you susceptible to sickness. Many essential bodily processes are disrupted and your risk of health problems increases.

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• memory impairment
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In MAGAland there's no such thing as bad publicity but this Democrat probably will benefit

 

By Hal Brown

Read article in TMZ here.

The Yelp reviews are like these (click to read a few), and don't address whether or not the bar serves good food and has enjoyable enetertainment.

Here's the current Yelp review page: 

Note that even with the bad reviews it gets 4 ½ stars.

Here's another TMZ article:

I modified this photo for my illustration.

This is a Google search of The Hooch Craft Cocktail Bar. I shows how the search is trending..

Click to enlarge image

This is what you see on Google Image search:

Click to enlarge

One article that got my attention was this one from the gay publication The Advocate.

Here's an excerpt:

The man with Boebert has now been identified as Gallagher, co-owner of Hooch Craft Cocktail Bar in Aspen. The U.K.’s Daily Mail was the first to report the news.

The fact that they are dating is “very surprising,” someone described as “a well-placed source” told the Mail. “I always thought Quinn was a cool guy and a Democrat. His parents would be horrified because they are definitely blue,” the source said.

Social media posts show Hooch has hosted LGBTQ+ events, such as a women’s party for Aspen Gay Ski Week and a drag performance called “A Winter Wonderland Burlesque & Drag Show.”

 

Unfortunately I can't compare the same search from before it became nationally know that to the grab and grope Beetlejuice sideshow put on by the bars owner, Quinn Gallagher, and the Charismatic Christian queen of Congress, Lauren "Bible Babe" Boebert.

What most rational people would consider bad publicity never seems to hurt Republicans, especially diehard MAGA Republicans. The Boebert brouhaha may end up in an election loss for her but then again the sympathy vote may help her eke out another narrow victory. 

Finally we have an incident where a Democrat, and a very progressive Democrat at that who is clearly woke, may benefit from what could be looked at as bad public behavior. In his defense, he thought he was making out with his date in the dark probably thinking nobody could see them unaware that he was being recorded by a sensitive low-light camera theater camera. Since he didn't think anyone could see this so one could make the case that this wasn't really public even though it happened in a public venue.

Here's more about Gallagher and his bar:

Excerpt:

Just before 11:30 a.m. Monday, more than 20 people sat in chairs and on couches bunched together in the Hooch Craft Cocktail Bar. Note, Gallager is currently a co-owner of the bar.

Most greeted each other with hugs and hellos; others settled in right away.

They were there for another Hospitality Matters meeting, an awareness effort started by Lindze Letherman, general manager at Hooch, and Quinn Gallagher, bartender at Hooch, in response to losing several of their friends and service industry colleagues to suicide. 

Through the bi-monthly meetings in the Hooch bar space, which feature guest speakers and open-ended conversation, Letherman and Gallagher hope to create a more conducive environment to discussing mental well-being with their peers. Monday’s meeting was the fifth one in the past few months.

“We wanted to at least try to get the community together to start talking and realizing that it’s OK to not be OK,” Letherman said.

Now he and his bar are famous, not just nationally but internationally considering the incident was first reported in the UK Daily Mail (here). 

Here's a tidbit from that article:

The hospitality business is something Gallagher and Boebert have in common. 

Boebert had a brief foray into the industry as the owner of Shooter's Grill in Rifle where customers could have their cheeseburger and onion rings served by a waitress with a 9mm on her hip.

The restaurant, which encouraged patrons to come armed, was shuttered in July 2022 after the landlord declined to renew Boebert's lease.

Despite bad Yelp reviews about Gallagher's business I would venture to suggest that it will help attract new customers if only out of curiosity. Residents 

I can see him having a profitable side hustle selling autographed photos of the groping picture.

Addendum:

This is what I posted on the bar's Facebook page which you can view here:

This will be an example of the truth of the saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity and I am glad to see this will prove that it works for progressive Democrats and much as it does for MAGA Republicans. Bad Yelp reviews won't hurt, in fact they will serve to give the bar even more publicity. More people will check out the bar just out of curiosity. After all, the bar still gets 4 ½ Yelp stars and similar rating elsewhere. I appreciate that Quinn and Lauren were attracted to each other and tried to put politcal views aside and see if their relationship could work despite being what I'd call strange bedfellows. 

A bit of snark:

Replica of
The Continental Congress Mirror

Update: Related from Salon:

Click above to read

Too bad for House GOP that Biden isn't God since he just wished them lots of luck in impeachment

 

Who knows what Bible these MAGA Republicans pray to.
Perhaps it's the Bible According to Boebert.

By Hal Brown

Not to split hairs, and far be it from me as a far from religious (okay, an atheist) Jew to get into a Talmudic discussion, but if Biden actually was an all-powerful diety he wouldn't have to wish the House Republicans "lots of luck" in their trying to impeach him. 

He could just either make it happen or stop it from happening. He could also make them look like abject fools in a futile attempt hurling screaming diatribes at him and trying to do a public Jamal Khashoggi on his son Hunter.

Of course the same Republicans frothing at the mouth to strut their stuff, pounding their chests and bellowing like great apes, as they play out their impeachment game to the final buzzer if they believe anyone has Heaven sent supreme  powers it's Donald Trump.

 For the believers among them impeachment is assured. God/Trump will have ordained it.

Related article, with my Trump thought bubble added.

What does Trump's gaffe-filled speech tell us about him? Is it psychology or physiology, or both?

 

Adapted from Hypnotic seance,

 by Richard Bergh, 1887

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

Trump's gaffe-filled speech yesterday where he said he beat Obama before and will beat him again and will prevent World War II was  covered, and mocked, on "Morning Joe" as examples of declining cognitive ability tied in with his age, that is, his physiology.

Click above to watch Morning Joe segment

There's another way of looking at this which Mika did allude to, his psychology. What we may be seeing is that this off-the-wall speech was an indication that his anxiety over his legal jeopardy is manifesting itself and he isn't thinking clearly due to this. 

Later on Morning Joe Al Sharpton spoke directly to this:

Click to view

This is what former federal prosecutor Harry Litman said on Sunday on "Meet the Press" 

 He's not afraid of prison and doesn't even think about it.

Here's the thing about this notion. It is true that if someone doesn't think about having something horrible happen to them, prison in Trump's case, they may not experience fear. Prison for Trump, after all, isn't inevitable like death. Thoughtful self-aware people think about their own mortality from time to time, and as death from disease or merely old age gets closer they think about it more often.

They key term above is thoughtful self-aware people.  I defy anyone to give indesputable examples of Trump having this characteristic. 

Depth psychology tells us that the unconscious mind exists. Harry Litman opined the following about what Trump thinks:

Instead, it's nothing more than a political witch hunt he assumes will disappear under the law.

I suspect that this indeed is what is in Trump's conscious mind. 

He has had minor setbacks with the law but for him these were nothing more than what for a normal person would be a $25 parking ticket that wouldn't raise our auto insurance costs or add driving infraction points. It costs as much as a meal at Applebee's but won't break the bank.

Trump has believed he's so far above the law he'd need a powerful telescope to see it, and that's even if he cared enough to look. He doesn't look because at some level in his unconscious there's an awareness that he'd see it if he looked hard enough. It may seem far away and impotent to him but he should learn about trying to fight the law from the song “I Fought the Law”.

 The song was written by Sonny Curtis of the Crickets which became popularized by the Bobby Fuller Four, who had a top-ten hit with it in 1966.  Below is the 1979 version from The Clash:

Click for video

Trump seems to be playing a version of the song which goes "I fought the law and I won" in his mind.

This is the belief system of a grandiose narcissist who has his belief in his invulnerability from the consequences of bad acts baked in.

Addendum:  

I nominate "I Fought the Law" as the official theme song for Trump. It's has been ranked No. 175 on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, and the same year was named one of the 500 "Songs that Shaped Rock" by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It can only help its standing as a rock classic if it is played at Trump on loudspeakers outside of his rallies. 

Perhaps someone can record a version that goes "he fought the law, and the law won" sometime soon.

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, Would God go with GOP or Joe?

 

By Hal Brown

Here's a personal note about my own religious background and beliefs.

This blog is really meant to be an addenudum to what I wrote yesterday, here:

I initially thought of the title of today's blog after reading this article about Evangelicals supposedly losing their grip on the GOP on Raw Story.

Click to read in Raw Story

I tried to make an illustration with this image:

It was taking too long to position the pointing finger properly on something like a stone tablet so I went with the easier to make image you see on the top of the page.

Click to enlarge

The hypocritical irony of beliving that  God gave the 10 Commandments to Moses as the basic rules for mankind to abide by  and how Republicans flout as many as half of them is beyond the scope of what I want to write about today.  Suffice to share the new 10  GOP Commandments (Slate 2021) by Liz Cheney and take note of the failed efforts in Texas to require that public schools to display them. Texas, of course, is the state where its governor, Greg Abbott, is putting barbed wire on floats acrtoss the Rio Grand to stop deperate immigrants from crossing.  

So much has been written about the abject hypocrisy of Evangelicals who support Trump and the other GOP candidates for president who either not only don't have any semblance of so-called the Christian values like those described on this Christian website (and like Trump probably don't believe in God). Then there's the most devout candidate, Pence, who managed to worship the false god Trump as he again and again did things that proved he was as cruel as the Devil. (More about Pence here: CNN's Tapper corners Mike Pence over accusations he used his faith to run cover for Trump)

The question I pose for Evangelicals is who would God choose to be president? 

A great deal has been written about Einstein's quote about quantum mechanics, God does not play dice with the universe, and what he meant by it (here for example). 

I doubt too many Evangelicals consider how quantum mechanics fits into God's plan, but I think they'd endorse the idea that God has a plan and everything He does is for a reason.

In other words, this goes back to my title, God does not play Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe when making decisions that effect life on Earth.

Which presidential candidate actually walks the walk? While Biden doen't talk the talk of the Evangelicals can anyone who thinks clearly about what he believes and what he has done and is trying to do for people is walking the walk that a kind, loving, and compassionate God would approve of?

You don't need to read these 100 quotes from the Bible about the poor, for example, to ask the question.

Click images to enlarge them

There's nothing more I can add to this.