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“How would you describe the job President Trump is doing behind the scenes and in front of the cameras during these daily briefings that we’re seeing?” the CBN reporter asked. “What’s been your perspective, Dr. Birx?”
“He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data,” Birx claimed, despite plenty of public evidence to the contrary. “And I think his — his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues,” she added, ladling on even more adulation and stroking of Trump’s well known demand for absolute loyalty.
Williams, however, was not about to let such genuflection go unremarked upon.
“That was translated from the original North Korean,” Williams’s dry wit concluded right after the clip ended, his biting quip drawing inspiration from the all-time classic zinger by sharp-witted liberal columnist Molly Ivins, who said of conservative Pat Buchanan’s infamously far right 1992 Republican National Convention speech: “It probably sounded better in the original German.”
This has led to coverage like this Tweet from Aaron Rupar, VOX associate editor, politics & policy:
Other articles:
Dr. Birx Unbelievably Claims Trump Is ‘Attentive to the Scientific Literature and the Details’ (Politcusa)
Deborah Birx praised Trump as attentive to scientific literature and details. Nope. (VOX)
Yesterday I wrote this:
.
I believe the time has come.
Trump has gone too far.
Drs. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci must stop giving credence to the president and what he says by sharing the literal and symbolic national stage with him.
I think they believe they have a role in reining him in and every so gently contradicting him and countering his dangerous advice and his making statements as if his gut feelings take precedence over solid medical advice.
When I woke up at 3:00 AM I had another very different thought about what Dr. Birx might be doing. She may very well be treating Trump as her patient, and this includes something every physician and every psychotherapist does. It is building confidence in their patients.
In order to do this with Donald Trump she is acting more as his psychiatrist than his physician. If she is doing this deliberately, and I am beginning to this she is, she has made a diagnosis. This would mean she understands that he is primarily suffering from a disorder that doesn’t cause actual suffering in the patient, narcissistic personality disorder. While Trump has multiple diagnoses adding up to what many clinicians such as John. Gartner, Ph.D. (founder of Duty to Warn), Lance Dodes, MD (a frequent guest on MSNBC), Justin Frank, MD, and I (writing about Trump’s psychopathology on Daily Kos) (these three links are to articles about Trump’s malignant narcissism by each of us) have labeled malignant narcissism, he is primarily driven by his extreme narcissism.
Those who have successfully influenced him from world leaders to Fox News celebrities have recognized this and crafted their communication with or aimed at him with this in mind.
As a psychotherapist working in what I fondly look back to as the glory days of very well-funded community mental health between 1970 and 1990 sometimes when we had a particularly difficult patient at our clinic in rural Michigan we had the ability to use co-therapists. I sometimes worked with extremely difficult patients with a female colleague. Of course this not only could be a highly effective approach but it enabled use to strategize as to what approach would work the best with the patient. We would assess what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong.
In a therapeutic version of good cop and bad cop we could deal with the patient’s resistance to insight into their self-defeating attitudes and behaviors by having one of us soften and make more palpable our confrontations.
Perhaps Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are doing this.
I think we need to hold our outrage in abeyance when we see Dr. Birx on the stage with Trump or in an interview like the one on CBN and realize that she is playing not merely to an audience of one, but hopefully really to someone she views as her patient.