Trump's Immunity or Immunity from Trump?
Containing Trump Contagion on April 25th
A standard play in the playbook of authoritarianism world over is the strongman's call for prosecutorial immunity.
In her book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history at NYU, captures this sentiment, “From Mussolini onward, making sure you have immunity while those who have done your dirty work go to jail has been an essential strongman skill.”
In 2008, the notorious Prime Minister of Italy and apparent Trump doppelganger, Silvio Berlusconi won immunity from prosecution, a victory for the conservative media tycoon billionaire who long complained of being hounded by “biased” prosecutors over his 30-odd trials spanning 25 years. And similar to Trump, he avoided penalty via appeal, acquittal, and running out the statutes of limitations. At one point, Berlusconi counted 2,500 hearings, 587 visits by the police and 174 million euros in legal fees, though he won all of the cases against him.
True to form, strongman Trump is seeking to use a presidential immunity defense to shield himself from criminal and civil charges this coming week on Thursday, April 25th.
On this day, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments regarding Mr Trump’s claims of immunity.
Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a judge on Thursday, September 28th, 2023 to throw out a federal indictment accusing him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and claimed that because the charges relate to actions he took as president, he should be “absolutely immune from prosecution.”
In a bid for the dismissal of federal charges against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election, Trump has claimed that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all acts taken while in office, unless they have been impeached and convicted for those acts.
The former president argues that without it, the nation’s commander-in-chief would not be able to function for fear of prosecution, though somehow no other president has feared prosecution on the regular. A federal appeals court rejected his argument on Feb. 6, but he appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 25.
The request to dismiss the election interference indictment, which came in a 52-page briefing filed in Federal District Court in Washington, was breathtaking in its scope. It argued that Mr. Trump could not be held accountable in court for any actions he took as president, even after a grand jury had returned criminal charges against him.
The charges (pictured above) to which Trump has pleaded not guilty are: conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiracy against rights.
In total, Trump is facing four criminal indictments, both on the state and federal level.
In December 2023, a federal appeals court in Washington rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that he was immune to the civil suits because their allegations arose from official acts he took while he was president.
The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution gives presidents immunity from being sued over actions taken as part of their official duties, but not from suits based on private, unofficial acts. The civil cases brought against Mr. Trump have raised the question of which role he was playing at the rally he staged on Jan. 6, when he told supporters to “fight like hell” and urged them to march to the Capitol.
As part of its decision, the appeals court sent the case back to Judge Mehta to decide whether Mr. Trump’s fiery speech on Jan. 6, in which he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol, should be considered an official act of his presidency or was instead a private act related to his re-election campaign.
The notion that Trump is immune from prosecution from his actions while president (or inactions as in the case of failure to call for a speedy end to the violence of January 6), is ludicrous as ostensibly no person should be above the law in the United States of America.
Special counsel Jack Smith has urged the US Supreme Court to reject Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” claim that presidential immunity protects him from facing federal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
It's of note on America's narcissism that a large swath of the populace believes Trump should be exempt from being held accountable. This example of entitled “American exceptionalism” is inane — America is not the first country to have prosecuted former sitting presidents, though it will be a first for this country, suggesting how egregious and over-the-top Trump's malfeasance has been.
Earlier this month, 19 retired military leaders filed a brief with the Supreme Court that argued Trump’s “absolute immunity” assaults the military’s “foundational commitments” to the rule of law and civilian control.
Although two courts have ruled against Trump’s immunity argument, Smith’s criminal case is likely dead if the Supreme Court agrees with the ex-president.
The former military officials say in their brief that Trump’s assertion of absolute immunity would put members of the military in an “untenable position,” where they would need to choose between their duty to follow orders within the chain of command and their duty to disobey unlawful orders.
“Immunizing the Commander-in-Chief from criminal prosecution, as Petitioner argues for here, would fly in the face of that duty, creating the likelihood that service members will be placed in the impossible position of having to choose between following their Commander-in-Chief and obeying the laws enacted by Congress,” their brief states.
During arguments in the appeals court, Trump’s lawyers argued that, under the theory of absolute immunity, a president would be immune from prosecution even if he ordered the special operations Navy unit known as SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political opponents, unless that president was first impeached and convicted in the Senate for doing so.
When the case was argued in the appeals court, a lawyer for Mr. Trump argued that former presidents are absolutely immune from prosecution even for murders they ordered while in office.
Psychiatrist and expert in violence, Dr. Bandy X. Lee coined the apt phrase Trump Contagion to describe the phenomenon of Trump’s psychological dangers spreading into social, cultural, civic, and geopolitical spheres of influence.
Complementing the concept of Trump Contagion, Prof. Sam Vaknin asserts, “There is community transmission in narcissism. Narcissists abuse you. Narcissists challenge you, attack you, push your buttons. Narcissists invade you via the chinks in your armor. Narcissists leverage your vulnerabilities and your defenses are provoked. Your immune defenses, psychological immune defenses, are provoked by the narcissist. And these defenses are narcissistic and psychopathic defenses.
When you're exposed to the narcissist, you catch the narcissism virus. You become mildly narcissistic and mildly psychopathic. But if your exposure is long enough, if the viral load of narcissism is long enough, great enough, if you catch a lot of narcissism viruses, you know, your immune system crumbles, is overwhelmed, and then your narcissistic and psychopathic defenses go haywire.
We have the same process in the human body. If the viral load is very high, the immune system goes haywire and we have an autoimmune response known as a cytokine stone.
The narcissism virus can overstimulate your immune system if you're exposed to it for too long or too intensively or too extensively or repeatedly. This is complex trauma.
And then your psychological immune system loses control in effect, becomes hyperactive and your defenses render you a narcissist and a psychopath. This happens in borderline personality disorder when the borderline patient switches to a psychopathic, full fledged psychopathic self-state known as secondary psychopathy, psychopath with emotions and empathy.
So narcissism can over-trigger your immune system so that you become a narcissist.
As your psyche, as your mind, as your soul, if you wish, is exposed to a weakened version of narcissist, it will develop an immune response. It will be able to identify, avoid, and shun a stronger narcissist. ~Prof. Sam Vaknin
In the legal system, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. In our world today, which is a narcissistic, psychopathic civilization, everyone is assumed to have been infected with narcissism until he or she proves to you that they had not.
By exposing yourself to narcissistic people who are not narcissists, weakened versions of narcissism, or elements and fragments of narcissism without the full thing in context, by doing this, you will have created antibodies, psychological antibodies.
As we become immunized, as our defenses become stronger and stronger against the classic wild type and even variants of narcissism, as we begin to spot narcissism, avoid narcissists, shun them, isolate them, defend them, deactivate them, prevent them from causing harm, and we take care of our own psychology.
We would need to wash our hands after every encounter with these contaminated beings and above all we would need to vaccinate.”
Despite the lower courts having ruled against Trump on the asinine question of presidential immunity, it’s unlikely that a stacked Supreme Court with three Trump appointees will prioritize the American people over the pathogen that is Donald J. Trump.
Rather than a slow and steady inoculation and immunization in the body politic against Trump Contagion, the most powerful court in the land will likely succumb to presidential immunity, further sickening America by ushering in possibly the most consequential ruling of a fascistic state—presidential immunity from any legal consequences.
This infection inflection point on the march to autocracy coming down the pike this week is stealthy and underreported in the chaos factory that is “Trump & Co.”—Steve Bannon style “flood the zone with s***.”
Resource:
Narcissist's Immunity
Narcissistic immunity is the narcissist's (erroneous) feeling that he is immune to the consequences of his actions. That he will never be affected by the outcomes of his own decisions, opinions, beliefs, deeds and misdeeds, acts, inaction, or by being a member of certain groups. That he is above reproach and punishment (though not above being feared and notorious). That, magically, he is protected and will miraculously be saved at the last moment. What are the sources of this fantastic misappraisal of situations and chains of events? (From the book Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited by Sam Vaknin)
Can believe there’s only one comment on this. I’ve been following Dr. Lee for 4 years now, so as soon as I saw “Trump Contagion” I knew it would be a good read. Yes he’s a virus indeed. And a virus is not considered life. They are more like automatons that highjack a cell’s dna in order to “reproduce”. That’s a very good description of the Trump contagion. It’s neither organic nor life-promoting. But it is highly contagious if one is not immune.
As ever, I appreciate the observations and commentary. However, I also never fully grasp the connecting or analogizing most everything to narcissism. But that is of less interest to me than the enlightenment gleaned from your continuing attention to important issues and your accompanying insights.
A couple of thoughts stirred up by your commentary -
I understand the medical concept of small doses - which inoculate- and large ones - which overwhelm.
However at the same time, this seems at odds with the social and psychological concept of the “slippery slope” where small changes leave us unaware of and unready for later large (and dire) consequences. The continual shift of attention, decision making and political power to the Presidency is one such example as is the same (and perhaps contradictory) shift of such powers to unaccountable government agencies.
With regard to absolute immunity of a President placing them above the law- I have yet to hear anyone point out the obvious. Should this be so decided by this Supreme Court -the currently sitting President could immediately “remove” all opponents including any Supreme Court justices who so ruled as well as any legislators who might impeach him. And any decision or laws could be reversed ad infinitum.
Absurd and destructive? Yes. At that point legal and likely? Indeed.