By Hal Brown, MSW, My Blog
This is the story which is on HUFFPOST that got my attention this morning:
Trump Instigates ‘Lock Him Up’ Chant For Obama At Rally — The president egged on supporters and repeated his baseless claim that the former president “spied” on his campaign.
Trump repeated his evidence-free claim during his speech in Henderson that Obama “got caught spying on my campaign.” He added: “We have him cold. Now let’s see what happens.”
Trump then hesitated, looked into the crowd and pointed.
In an instant they were chanting “lock him up” — a new riff on Trump’s 2016 election refrain, when he and his fans chanted “lock her up,” referring to Hillary Clinton.
You tell me (in the poll) whether you think someone in the crowd was planted to instigate this chant or Trump manipulated them. All it takes is one person with a loud voice to do this. One is good, two or more his better.
Some Psychology
The term “projection” is often used colloquially to describe what Trump engages in. It is sometimes used inaccurately in reference to Thump and other times is used quite accurately:
Accurate: Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. Wiki
These parts from Wiki apply accurately to Trump:
Projection tends to come to the fore in normal people at times of personal or political crisis but is more commonly found in narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder.
.A bully may project his/her own feelings of vulnerability onto the target(s) of the bullying activity. Despite the fact that a bully's typically denigrating activities are aimed at the bully's targets, the true source of such negativity is ultimately almost always found in the bully's own sense of personal insecurity or vulnerability. Such aggressive projections of displaced negative emotions can occur anywhere from the micro-level of interpersonal relationships all the way up through to the macro-level of international politics, or even international armed conflict.
As unconscious psychological defenses Trump uses denial (the most primitive) and projection the most frequently.
Denial is a defense mechanism proposed by Anna Freud which involves a refusal to accept reality, thus blocking external events from awareness. If a situation is just too much to handle, the person may respond by refusing to perceive it or by denying that it exist. Reference.
What Trump does that is conscious is more a kind of “I’m rubber, you’re glue” way to turn what he knows is true about him onto an opponent.
His depicting Joe Biden as sleepy or cognitively impaired stands out as an example may be a combination of unconscious projection and consciously knowing this applies to him. He obviously is well aware his mental abilities have been questioned and mocked. Here’s one example:
Donald Trump has yet again boasted of his performance on an elementary test designed to screen for early signs of dementia — this time demonstrating one of the easier tasks during a White House interview.
Speaking to Fox News medical contributor Dr Marc Siegel, Mr Trump described asking a doctor if there was “some kind of cognitive test” he could take to dispel “fake news” about his mental health. He then described one of the exercises he was given, a memory test.
“It’s like you’ll go ‘person, woman, man, camera, TV’. So they’ll say ‘could you repeat that?’ So I said ‘yeah’. So it’s person, woman, man, camera, TV. Okay, that’s very good …
“If you get it in order you get extra points. He said nobody gets it in order, it’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy. And that’s not an easy question.”
Continuing his monologue about the exercise, Mr Trump described the examiners saying “that’s amazing! How did you do that?”, answering “I do it because I have, like, a good memory. Because I’m cognitively there”.
Mr Trump’s demonstration of the test was roundly mocked on social media, withDaily Show host Trevor Noah rendering the president’s list of words as a parody of the Meredith Brooks song “Bitch”.
When it comes too “lock him up” I think Trump is 100% consciously aware he is guilty of crimes which were he vulnerable to prosecution and were he not president he would be facing prison time. I have no doubt he is aware that he has committed treason. He knows that in some countries he would be considered a traitor and we know what said ought to be done to traitors:
I suppose if you search long enough you will find “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you” in a psychology text. Suffice to say for the purposes of this learned opus it is something children say and has made it into popular culture thanks to Pee-wee Herman:
Pee-wee is also known for this variation:
Here’s Ross Geller on Friends:
Update:
“Unlike the federal court system, which often allows prisoners to remain free during the appeals process, state courts tend to waste no time in carrying out punishment,” he added. “After someone is sentenced in New York City, their next stop is Rikers Island. Once there, as Trump awaited transfer to a state prison, the man who’d treated the presidency like a piggy bank would receive yet another handout at the public expense: a toothbrush and toothpaste, bedding, a towel, and a green plastic cup.” from Trump could end up at Rikers Island jail by the end of 2023 if he loses re-election: Legal experts.
So what do you think? Take the poll.