In what would typically fell non-pathological/healthy people after a heavy duty court appearance facing the rest of one’s life in prison, Federal criminal defendant, Trump was not to be deterred and filled up his “love tank” with ample narcissistic supply (attention) at his campaign financing and personal redemption tour at Bedminster, New Jersey last night. Many people may perceive this superhuman feat of remarkable get back on your feet and the show must go on as proof positive of his god-like status that he can transition in one day between the worst court appearance of his life to energetically giving a rousing speech of grievance politics. For those who are already Trump inclined, he gave a robust performance consistent with his greatest hits. Alarmingly, that he can move so seamlessly between self states of dejection in the courthouse to elation behind the speech lectern is troubling and indicative of his chronically highly dissociative states of mind. Akin to dementia, it's something close to amnesia, what narcissists experience as a ongoing moment to moment reset, in what used to be called multiple personality disorder and is now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. What’s heralded as the stuff of champions is actually the stuff of horror movies.
Narcissists have a discontinuous relationship with time, presenting trouble on many fronts, especially in terms of accountability. If one can't remember what they did a moment ago, how can they be accountable, goes the inner refrain of the narcissist. Narcissists will often blame, though they likely don't have the phrase for it, a different self-state or pseudo-identity for having done whatever dubious, at best, or pernicious, at worst, act for which they are being held to account. Even still, by definition, a narcissist lacks a conscience. There is no inner goodness or empathy to appeal to to make right out of wrong. As Trump plays to his base’s fantasies, he draws them deeper into his web, what's known as a shared fantasy/psychosis, which en masse is called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”].
I am a self-taught concerned American citizen on the impacts of narcissism, with a specific interest in the impacts of narcissism on culture. I am not hamstrung by academic or professional political correctness and by extension, the antiquated Goldwater Rule which muzzles mental health professionals from publicly commenting on Trump’s gross pathology. The pretext for this rule is that mental health professionals have not examined him in person to diagnose him, nevermind that there is ample media coverage of him and more accessible information than in private practice for any given patient.
I'm positing that Trump is the reification/poster child of the worst of Cluster B psychopathologies and that he presents with the most pernicious set of comorbidities as a sadistic psychopathic narcissist.
I'm offering today's commentary in the spirit of looking at ways in which a major portion of the electorate is being played by Trump. This piece endeavors to reveal pathology and manipulation tactics of last night’s post-arraignment speech. The scope of this piece is limited to examining his pathologies apart from his pathological lying, which is well documented many places, including here.
Transcript of Trump's Post-Arraignment Speech
It's great honor to have you here today. We witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country. To watch a corrupt sitting President had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty right in the middle of a presidential election in which he was losing very badly. This is called election interference and yet another attempt to Reagan steal a presidential election. More importantly, it's a political persecution, like something straight out of a fascist or a communist nation.
Narcissists suffer as a object of persecution, and see others as persecutory objects (people), who threaten their sense of omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful) and omnipresence. In general, nevermind being the President of United States, narcissists are paranoid and grandiosely believe that they are sufficiently important that they are being persecuted with regularity. Being a victim of persecution is a throughline of grievance politics and has the desired effect of eliciting sympathies in order to get one's way and effectuate a political goal, in this case, support in the forms of donations, a vote, political influence, etc.
This time will go down and infamy will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt President of the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly, the President who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.
This statement is an example of projection, as Trump will be remembered as most corrupt and mafia-ish president in American history, who tried to destroy American democracy with the insurrection on January 6.
But they will follow bigger and better President of the United States under the crime so heinous that only the death penalty would be and threatening 400 years in prison for possessing presidential papers, which just about any other president has done is one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law. The Espionage Act has been used to go after traitors and spies. It has nothing to do with a former President legally keeping his own documents as President, but very simply, the Presidential Records Act, which is not even mentioned in this ridiculous 44 page indictment under the Presidential Records Act, which is civil, not criminal. I have these documents. The crucial legal precedent is most important case ever on the subject known as the Clinton Socks case. Bill Clinton kept 79 audio tapes in the sock draw. They included discussions of US military involvement in Haiti, discussions of US foreign policy about defense and offense against Cuba, recordings of President Clinton's conversations with the many foreign leaders at the time. Think of that. Sensitive facts about trade negotiations taken from presidential briefings, discussions with the Secretary of State about conflict in Bosnia, and much, much more. Very big stuff. Not only was Bill Clinton never even considered for criminal prosecution based on the tapes he took, but when he was sued for them, he won the case. Judge Amy Berman Jackson's decision states under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, the decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the President during the President's hearings and in the President's sole distress. An administration, even an opposing one, would consider that to be the end, but not the corrupt Biden administration. The SoC's decision, as it's known, also states, quote the National Archives and records Administration, or NARA, does not have the authority to designate material as presidential records. NARA does not have the tapes in question and NARA lacks any right, duty or means to seize control of them. This is law. The president enjoys unconstrained authority to make decisions regarding the disposal of documents that's unconstrained to make that decision. Neither the archivist nor Congress has the authority to veto the President's decision. The Presidential Records Act does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the archivist to transfer records under the statute. This responsibility is left solely to the President of the United States. Think of that. That's the decision. Think of that. Just think of that. In other words, whatever documents the President decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. It's an absolute right.
Trump is so far gone on the narcissism spectrum and entitled that he thinks that the law does not apply to him, that he is above the law. He's pushing a fantastic, that is to say fantasy-based, narrative that he has divine or king-like powers, that he is omnipotent.
This is the law. And that is something that people have now seen. And it couldn't be more clear. They would have dropped this case immediately because they're destroying. And this is why no other president, even those who kept far more documents there, has ever been even investigated, let alone charged with a crime put forward by the Biden Administration included stage photographs of boxes at Mar-a-Lago. Many people have asked me why I like these boxes. Why did you want them? The answer, in addition to having everyone under the Presidential Records Act is that these boxes were containing all types of personal belongings. Many, many things. Shirts and shoes and everything, as can be seen in the picture where someone might be. I wonder what might have been dumped. One of the very neatly arranged boxes all over the floor. They were full of newspapers, press clippings, thousands of pictures. Thousands and thousands of White House pictures. The White House photographers today, they put so many pictures, and we saved all of them in the windows, boxes, clothing, memorabilia and much, much more. I haven't had a chance to go through all the boxes. It's a long, tedious job, takes a long time, which I was prepared to do. But I have a very busy life. I've had a very busy life. They make it more busy because you're always tidying. And under the SoC's decision, there seemed to be no rush. I wasn't in a rush because that decision was law. The other picture that was so violent, you remember that one was angry and corrupt was the photo stage by the FBI and those that raided Mar-a-Lago. They were putting documents all over the floor. Remember the famous picture all over, said confidential, said presidential, said all sorts of things and it was supposed to be there like it was that way. When they raided, it wasn't that way they put them they took the picture and released it illegally to the press. They took my medical records. They passed what, my birth certificate and apologized. They even brought a safe cracker. This is a professional safe cracker. They brought into Mar-a-Lago, and they broke into my safe. And you know what they found? Nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing there. According to the presidential records act, which was a big deal, I was supposed to negotiate with, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was loaded by gun and FBI agents. I have security tapes over I gave them security tapes of everything. In a flagrant violation of the fourth amendment of a constitution which protects the right against unreasonable search and seizure. You covered very well, I must say. Very well. I'm not the one who thinks I'm above the law. I'm the one that followed the law. It's Joe biden and his corrupt department of investors who think they are above the law. Never before have the two standards of justice in our country been more starkly revealed. Joe Biden had troves of classified documents from his time as vice president and even as a senator, which was completely and totally illegal. In fact, other senators heard about it. Dick Durbin heard about it. You have to see his response. There's no way that's totally illegal took him as a senator out of his stuff. They were stopped when they found out they actually thought it was impossible to do. Biden sent 1850 boxes to the university of Delaware, making the search very difficult for anybody. And he refuses to give them up, and he refuses to let people even look at them, and then they see how he's behaving so nicely. Many of Biden's classified documents were in Chinatown, DC. Chinatown, which is shocking, considering his family received so much money from China. I wonder how many times the friends of arson family review those documents. Chinatown, DC. Others were insecured at his so called pen biden center in Washington, which paid biden approximately $1 million a year. The money supposedly coming from Canada. And still other classified documents were screened all over his garage floor with his now famous Corvette stored. Except probably there was no security, and the door was left open. Most of the time it was open. All of those classified documents, all of those documents screwed all over the floor, piled up like junk. Unlike me, who had absolute declassification authority as president, Joe Biden, as vice president, had no authority to declassify and no right to possess the documents. He had no right. Instead of falling under the presidential records act, biden's actions fell under a much stricter federal records act, which has very, very tough criminal penalties, yet nothing happens. Nothing happened. Have you heard anything about the big search for his documents? Most infamously of all, Hillary Clinton set up an illegal private server in her basement with a deliberate intention of violating public information law so she could hide her pay for play scandals at the Clinton foundations or whatever. Hillary stored vast quantities of classified insensitive information on her illicit server. Some of it happened to leak. It leaked into Anthony Wiener's computer. Remember Anthony into his computer? You don't want to be on his computer. And all of it was illegal because thankfully, she was never president. She didn't have the powers to deter. She didn't have the powers to deter. It's a big difference, and neither did you. Have your mind. Have a drink. A little bit cooler. Thank you. Happy birthday. Nice person, isn't it? Is with I just got charged with it. 400 years of proxy. If you add them all up. A fake. Fake. 400 years. Thank you, darling. That's so nice. We're going to make it into the greatest birthday of all. One caught Hillary, then deleted and answered. Was, nobody does that because of the expense, but it's pretty conclusive. 33,000 emails and defiance of the congressional subpoena already launched. The subpoena was there, and she decided to delete and then snake and destroy her cell phones with a hammer. And then they say, I participate in obstruction. Now, think of it. That's called obstruction. There's never been obstruction as grave as that. She did this in the face of everything, and yet nobody did anything about it. The FBI and the DOJ protected her, did not receive subpoenas, did not use a grand jury, did not execute search warrants. And then the corrupt head of the FBI, James Comey, declared no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case. Can you believe it? That was just one of many items. Hillary Clinton broke the law and she didn't get indicted. Joe Biden broke the law, and in many other ways, we're finding out, and so far has not gotten indicted. I did everything right and they indicted me. But, you know, we're serving as a great example in the case of Bill Clinton's national Security Advisor. Remember that Sandy Berger? He was caught stealing classified documents from the nation's. Very big ones, very important ones, by stuffing them in his pants. That's pretty. And putting them also in his socks. And he destroyed them and cut the paper with scissors. Cut them all up. What Berger did was highly illegal, but he was given nothing, no jail time. Nothing happened. There were countless other examples. Bill Clinton, who I happened to like, hard to believe that before I did this, I was actually quite friendly with him. They said he used him a little bit more as an advisor in the 2016 election. He said you better get to Wisconsin. You're going to lose. Really not. You better get to Michigan. You're going to lose no amount they did. Bill Clinton lost the nuclear codes, and absolutely nothing was done about he lost the nuclear codes. The George W. Bush White House lost 22 million emails per record. Narrator cannot assure a complete transfer of any of the Bush records. A document serving truck was started on the way to Dick Sanitize. Can you imagine? Hillary Clinton took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture, china flatware runs and more from the White House. And she wasn't prosecuted. She took the furniture and the Chinese. How about if Trump did that? Do you think Trump did was a problem? The horrific violations of my rights by Crooked Joe Biden's weaponized department of injustice are unthinkable. Unthinkable has happened so bad for our country. Democrats all they lawlessly pierced my attorney client privilege with news. What they did to lawyers, what they have done to our lawyers, our lawyers, all of our lawyers, they've done things that were absolutely horrible and unthinkable. The leaking has been unbelievable and highly illegal. We learned more about from the Washington Post, New York Times about the DOJ's boxes hoax. It's a boxes hoax. Than from prosecutors themselves. We want to read about it to pick up the Washington Post, which is not doing well, or you pick up the media Post, but they'll do better now because they resource. But they'll end up there. But it's not supposed to be that way. We don't want to learn from the plans. What do you want to learn from leaks? We want to learn from the people supposed to learn from Washington. But we learned nothing about the Biden bribery scheme or special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation. Robert Hur is doing the Biden investigation. He's a very respected, very nice person. Very nice person. Mine's not such a nice person. Deranged lunatic, which are many times the magnitude of ours in both member and severity. That's the prosecutor that they gave. He totally exonerated Mike Pence. I'm happy about that. Mike did nothing wrong, but he happened to have classified documents. But they exonerated him. And Biden is a different servant so much. You have to really think about what I said as a senator. He took all of those documents. It's unprecedented. The prosecutor in the case, I will call it our case is a thug. I've named him Deranged Jack Smith. I wonder what his used to be. Jeff Smith. What's his name? Jake Smith. He's a very nice man. He's a behind the scenes guy, but his record is absolutely atrocious. He does political hit jobs. He's been known to recently arrest a certain governor, you know the governor, Bob McDonald, Virginia and absolutely ruined his life and the life of his family. All these wonderful family members, I knew them only to have the case overturned, eight to nothing by the Supreme Court. He destroyed that man and he destroyed that family. By the way, I will tell you, I'm here and I love you all and we can thank her. But what these sups, what these sups have done to my family is a disgrace. What they did to my family. And that young man right there, he's answered more subpoenas than any human being in the history of the world. And you know what? They have nothing. After all those subpoenas, literally thousands of them. Congress, fake councils, Mueller report, all of this, all he did is answer subpoenas all the time. It gives us the conveyor. Congratulations. But Eric is fantastic in what he and Don, what they've gone through. And these are serious people. These are serious people. But what he's done to my family what they have done to my family is horrible. He also tried to railroad John Edwards on a completely bogus legal theory that didn't hold up in court. It's no wonder this raging lunatic was shipped off to the head to prosecute war criminals using globalist tribunals, not beholden to the Constitution or the rule of law. Two things Jack Smith clearly disdains. You take a look at this guy. He looks like a thug. But then I watched him make a speech, and he was trembling because it wasn't his territory. He feels much safer in the inner sanctuary of the Department of Injustice, where he can be in his room and scream at people. He's a raising and uncontrolled campaigner, as is his wife, who also happened to be the producer of that Michelle Obama. Don't forget, this persecution is being done by the same weaponized agencies that for seven years have been running illegal psychological warfare campaigns against the American people, much as if they were trying to destabilize a foreign country. From the Russia rescue. Russia hoax to the no collusion. Mueller witch hunt, to impeachment hopes number one, impeachment hopes number two. The 51 lying intelligence office. They said it's rustic, disinformation, and they knew it wasn't. It's made about, according to some of the great posters that are right here, made from anywhere from a ten to 17 point difference. And yet we still got more votes than any sitting president in history in the second election. And we actually did much better in the second election than we did in the first election. The fake Goss paid for by the Democrats. How about the fake dossier? Remember that one? I think that was easy. To go home and say, hello, darling, how are you? When they let it back up. Wasn't easy at all. Spying on my campaign. We caught them spying in my campaign.
This rambling diatribe of whataboutism and false equivalency is all over the map and ends with paranoid ideation that he is being spied on regularly.
The FBI Twitter files and so much more. It's all been a battle of disinformation, one thing after the other, and all to protect the radical left misfits. It's also no coincidence that these charges against me came down the very same day. Evidence revealed Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Ukraine. Took a $5 million bribe. But the FBI and the Justice Department don't even want to talk about it. They said something on television tonight. It had zero time on the three major network. Zero. But my impeachment had almost all the time. I had 351 minutes. They had no minutes. Okay, I think a lot of people are going to go. I will tell you, I just left Miami, and I've never seen love in the streets like that. We've seen a lot of love. I've never seen love like that. Because they know, they know what we all go through. They know what we've gone through and they see it and they're smart. And many of those people coming from Cuba, Venezuela, other countries, they've seen this happening to their countries. I used to say that the United States, if it keeps going this way it's going to be Venezuela on steroids. And now we're buying oil from Venezuela. Can you believe we have more liquid gold under our feet than any other nation? But we're buying power from Venezuela and we're refining it in eastern the dirtiest, worst oil probably anywhere in the world and we're refining it. So you can imagine what's going up with the more beautiful stuff we're not taking out of the ground and making a lot of money and paying off debt and reducing taxes further, which we are in the process of doing. They want to distract from the real espionage and the real crime. So let's use President Trump to do so. Let's come out and let's indict President Trump so they don't talk about the $5 million bill. Just yesterday Senator Grassley revealed that the Barista executive who allegedly paid the bribe reportedly has cricket jail on tape. There's 17 tapes. I understand he must be a nice guy to deal with. That the guy from Burisma, nice company. They got him and Hunter and 17 different tapes supposedly, but the FBI isn't showing him. Remember they impeached me for asking a simple question about Biden's corrupt dealings in Ukraine and now they seem that once again I was right. Joe Biden and the radical left can take foreign bribes and be totally protected. Republicans all you must finally get tough. You've got to get tough. You got to get tough and you got to slow when you arrest your leading political opponent. We no longer have a democracy. When people are allowed to pour through our open borders and our elections are rigged our country is in very serious trouble. When inflation is allowed to rage, when energy independence and dominance we have independence and dominance. We were going to be seen very very dominant. Within six months we're going to dominate the whole world with energy, make a fortune. We were going to be paying off debt and lowering taxes at a level that nobody's ever seen and they came in and they ended it. But when that's taken away from us, when interest rates and taxes spiral upward in an uncontrolled way, when murders are allowed to roam murders, these are horrible killers. Murders are allowed to roam the streets of a democrat run cities unset. But the incompetent district attorney in New York indicts Trump for a crime that everybody agrees, every pundit, everybody. There is no crime. But murderers go out and nobody ever even comes and knocks on their door and they know they're there and they know their rooms and they know their locations and they're roaming their cities all over and some of them are coming in right northwood borders. But then you have a nation that, as we are, is in serious, serious decline. We're the nation in serious decline. If the communists get away with this, it won't stop with me. They will not hesitate to ramp up the persecution of Christians, pro life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates, which they do. We must end it permanently, and we must end it immediately. Now that the seal so important is broken. The seal is broken by what they've done. They should never have done this. This is an unwritten rule. You just don't unless it's real bad, the seal is more broken. In addition to closing the border and removing all of the criminal elements that have illegally invaded our country, making America energy independent and even dominant again, and immediately ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, have it ended in 24 hours, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America. And the entire Biden crime family name is special prosecutor and all others involved with the destruction of our elections, our borders, and our country itself are destroying our country. And when I'm re-elected, and we will get re-elected, we have no access to look at all the country. I will totally obliterate the deep state. We will obliterate. We know who they are. I know exactly who they are.
Again, see persecutory object and a hellish closer below.
They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away my freedom. They want to silence me, because I will never let them silence you. They want you silenced. And I am the only one that can save this nation because you know they're not coming after me. They're coming after you. And I just happen to be standing in their way.
This ominous gobbledygook also packs a punch. He asserts that the authorities want to take away his freedom in order to silence him and us. He is claiming to be one and the same as the people, as the Populist voice of the masses, us versus them, the authorities, in a zero-sum game.
Narcissists suffer with hyper-reflection, which is a confusion between internal objects (internal representations/mental constructs of people) and external objects (people)). Narcissists do not relate to people as external objects, only internal objects. The narcissist confuses external objects for internal objects. Upon meeting you, the narcissist takes a mental snapshot of you, capturing your essence, and internalizes you as an internal object during the idealization phase. As you assert your own agency which differs from the snapshot, the narcissist, being a control freak and authoritarian, mentally photoshops the tattered image to maintain idealization of you until he is unable to maintain the ideal image of you and the inevitable devalue and discard phases of your relationship ensues. The narcissist can only photoshop you so much, as you are different than a fixed moment in time when the narcissist initially met you. The narcissist wants to reduce you to a two dimensional cardboard cutout of a person to maintain his mental landscape, which is a precarious house of cards.
The narcissist sees his insignificant other/the victim as an extension of himself. Since others are an extension of himself like an arm or a leg, a narcissist relates to others in a state of what used to be called symbiosis and is now called merger/fusion. Merger/fusion represents the opposite of the healthy and necessary process of separation/individuation from mother. The blunt force trauma of the etiology of narcissism is that he never successfully separated/individuated from mother.
By recalling a primitive part in his audience’s unconsciousness that is undeveloped and wants to still remain fused with mother, he is attempting to regress his victim to his mental age of anywhere from two years to nine years old for a high functioning narcissist. This is one mechanism by which narcissism is infectious and contagious. He wants to regress you to make you feel safe with him as the parent figure. It's a Faustian bargain as you trade away your agency and also mentally regress just like the narcissist, who is a case of arrested development. Because the authoritarian narcissist is also a child, the relationship devolves into a dual mothership, oscillating between authoritarian parent figure and helpless child.
And I will never be. Moving on November 5, 2024, justice will be done. We will take back our country, and we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you.
When he says “great job,” he is flattering the audience as a form of manipulation to get what he wants — power.
As we head into what will undoubtedly be a harrowing election, I would encourage keeping your eye on the ball with laser focused hypervigilance on Trump, likely the biggest narcissist on the planet. I know many of us are fatigued with him. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Authoritarians wear down their population to usurp control. When Benjamin Franklin was asked after a session of the Constitutional Convention, "What kind of a government have you given us?” he replied, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” Our futures and quality of life depend on remaining vigilant to protect our democracy.
Some people are of the opinion that we should starve a narcissist of narcissistic supply, not give him any oxygen. I disagree. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. In America, we are effectively trapped in a room with the equivalent of a lion, a predator. Would you take your eyes off of him to feel safer?
As I hope I have helped to illustrate above, narcissism is more complicated than being an arrogant, self-involved, selfie-posting windbag. Narcissists are pathologically delusional, on the verge of psychosis and experience full-blown micro-episodes of psychosis. Those of us who are sane, do not want a psychotic President who appeals to and exploits our misguided fantasies.