Trump Depicts Himself Perfectly In the Mirror of Projection

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Trump Depicts Himself Perfectly in the Mirror of Projection
by Lawrence O'Donnell
August 11, 2023



Transcript

[Lawrence O’Donnell] Well, today, a stark raving lunatic called someone else a stark raving lunatic, which is one of the things you have to expect from a stark raving lunatic. Psychiatrists call it projection. Many people do it in small ways, but the further gone you are, the more likely you are to always be accusing other people of bad things that you do, or throwing negative labels at people that actually apply to you perfectly. And so in psychiatric terms, talking about himself through projection, today Donald Trump called himself -- and these are all Donald Trump's exact words -- “a man with the mind, ideas, and IQ, of a first grader, a mental catastrophe, a stark raving lunatic who can't string two sentences together and is not only dumb and incompetent, but I believe he has gone mad.” That is what Donald Trump thinks, deep down, in the darkness of what's left of his mind, about himself. And psychiatrists have told us that's why he hurls that self-loathing language at other people. Projection is one of his defense Mechanisms.

The dozens of distinguished Psychiatrists, and mental health Professionals, who co-authored the book, “The Dangerous case of Donald Trump, 37 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess a President,” have diagnosed Donald Trump's projection reflex, including in discussions on this program, when those psychiatrists have joined us here. And Donald Trump's projection is so flawless, it is impossible to come up with a better description of Donald Trump than the one Donald Trump offers us through projection: “A man with the mind, ideas, and IQ, of a first grader, a mental catastrophe, a stark raving lunatic who can't string two sentences together and is not only dumb and incompetent, I believe he has gone mad.”

No one self-diagnoses more accurately than Donald Trump. No one.

What it takes to be a financial supporter of a stark raving lunatic like Donald Trump, is something that social psychologists will be working on, no doubt, for the next several decades at least.

[Donald Trump] I don't need anybody's money. It's nice. I don't need anybody's money. I'm using my own money. I'm not using the Lobbyists; I'm not using donors; I don't Care. I'm really rich. I'll show you that in a second.

[Lawrence O’Donnell] That was Donald Trump on the first day of his political career. And early in the campaign, Republican primary voters said one of the things that they absolutely loved about Donald Trump, was that he didn't need any money to run for office. So he was incorruptible, obviously incorruptible, because he's so rich.

No individual in the history of American politics has taken more money from donors than Donald Trump. The truth always was, Donald Trump was never rich enough to pay for a presidential campaign. And now, Donald Trump does not think he's rich enough to pay for criminal defense lawyers. And so the people who he promised he would never ask for money, he now begs for money every day, via email, to pay for criminal defense lawyers for Donald Trump, and his accused co-conspirators, and others who have not yet been accused of any crimes. Donald Trump doesn't pay for anyone's lawyers, including his own. The most gullible political contributors in the history of the world pay for the Trump criminal defense team. But Donald Trump decides what that criminal defense team does and does not do.