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.

Some common physical effects of stress include (reference):

• memory impairment
• depression
• skin conditions, such as eczema
• difficulty sleeping
• obesity
• heart disease
• digestive problems
• autoimmune diseases

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.