Another day, another outrageous comment. Today’s was a doozy. Trump joked about “Second Amendment folks” assassinating the judges Hillary Clinton would appoint.
Enough has been enough going on fifteen or sixteen months now, so there’s not much more to say.
Fuck this guy. Clinton just got a donation.
Please share widely!
While it’s clear that he’s talking about assassination, despite his campaign’s pathetic attempt to divert, after rewatching the video, it’s not really clear if he’s talking about assassinating the judges or Clinton.
…but of course it’s outrageous either way.
to the right of Trump.
He’s shocked.
endorsing Clinton in spite of GOP ties, two former Republican EPA guys just said they are backing Clinton.
There are Republicans out there who have kept one foot in reality while the Party played the Southern strategy to its logical conclusion, i.e. Southernizing the GOP, doubling down on stupid, pandering to the ignorant, and generally dragging American politics into the mud. Trump is separating those who are interested in having a country with those whose head is so far up their keisters that they know or don’t care what kind of president he would be.
This is not a joke.
Calling for the assassination of judges OR a presidential nominee is no laughing matter.
Everything he has done has been calculated to blow his convention bounce and lose by double digits to Clinton. It’s hard to conclude otherwise at this point.
been following Trump for 30 years. He’s just published a book on Trump. I heard this interview this morning. Johnston says, Trump wants to win. He also says Trump asked to be George H.W. Bush’s running mate.
If we assume Trump is rational, he looks like he’s trying to throw the campaign. That’s why I posted that he has NPD. His motives are pathological, his connection to reality, as we see it, is tenuous. Outside of some dictators in developing countries, you don’t see (aspiring) leaders this mentally unhealthy.
You know what happens when you ass-u-me, right?:) I think it’s especially applicable in this case.
But I’m with Patrick Kennedy. It’s does a disservice to the truly mentally ill to stigmatize them via association with Trump and his entirely rational brand of politics. Rationality here defined as it is in political science, the deployment of logic to advance self interest.
He knows enough about politics to know that blatant bigotry beats a dog whistle any day, and that informed his paint by numbers primary campaign. He is either genuinely startled to find that the “real America” the right always talks about is a myth or the real minority, or he now is deliberately trying to lose. Who know’s? He’s definitely a narcissist and sociopath, so are most political leaders.
And which third world dictators are mentally ill? Most are superb students in the art of gaining and maintaining power at all costs. Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and machinations are deliberate and not the result of mental illness or delusions but careful planning.
It doesn’t do a disservice to the mentally ill. The mentally ill don’t see themselves as one big club. Most mentally ill people don’t even see themselves as mentally ill, which people seem to confuse with being completely “insane” instead of suffering a psychological problem. Do you think everyone who takes an anti-depressant thinks they are mentally ill? That’s something like a gajillion people. Most of these people don’t think of themselves as mentally ill. What we’re lacking is 1) a vocabulary for discussing mental health 2) a public understanding of what mental health is. As I said in my post, we talk about mental health parity with general health, but we really don’t walk the walk. People still think of a psychological diagnosis as a stigma.
If there was as much evidence to support a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, few, if any people, would be making these arguments. I’m pushing for a more public understanding.
I”m thinking Idi Amin. Maybe Khadaffi, though I don’t really have much info. Stalin was almost certainly paranoid. The thing is, mental health is not an either/or thing. Some mental disorders are relatively mild (seasonal affective disorder). Others are more extreme (schizophrenia). We don’t look at general health a a healthy/unhealthy binary. I have Type II diabetes. People don’t whisper about it. I’m not Infirm. I have a medical problem. Most of the people responding to this post are still looking at mental health through a sane/insane binary.
Seeing how much confusion and diversion it generated, I am not sure if mental health is the best frame of reference to discuss how to contain and explain Trump. I think he isn’t extraordinary, he’s just another politician who has power as his end and will use whatever means those ends require. Within today’s Republican Party, those means are racism, xenophobia, misognyism and surprisingly protectionism.
Where Tom Frank went wrong in his analysis is that this bloc of voters knows its economic interests isn’t served by the culture warriors, and they finally found their champion who will give them their bread as well as their circus. What Trump has failed to realize is that this bloc of voters at max, is only 45% of the country and incapable of delivering the presidency.
If his end wasn’t paper but fame and money, then he has done a good job of achieving both and winning the presidency is actually a barrier to his objective. I think this rationale is pure conjecture at this point, though we do have the evidence from Kasich that he wanted to be the pitchmen for the country while the Veep did all the real work.
… when not scoped by logic. Go figure.
A psychotic person might find it in their self interest to quiet the voices only they can hear by doing as directed by same. In this manner a psychotic who kills is deploying a ‘logical’ advance, in their self interest.
Donald Trump is acting in accordance with the dictates of a mind unable to grasp the reality of the world and so adopts the rules of the TV. These are the ‘rules’ he lives by. Rules about grabbing attention. Rules about what is acceptable to say (and, presumably, to do). And rules about consequences for actions and words. They are not the same as the rules almost everybody else lives by. If you want to define it as ‘rational’ to act according to those rules, and for an end scoped by those rules, you’ve (also) left the rules of logic that everybody else lives by.
Everybody else lives by rules governing behaviour and actions that have consequences. Donald Trump is trying to live in a real world while operating under TV world rules and only accepting TV world consequences. That’s not rational.
n/t
Trump is following in a long line of demagogues that exploit legitimate fears for personal advantage. The technique backfired (for the moment) only because respect and empathy for the Khans’ status as Gold Star Parents trumped (pun intended) their Muslim faith and Pakistani origins, even among much of Trump’s support base.
While Donald Trump is pathological, he is not mentally ill: he is merely continuing a pattern that never failed him in the past.
Trump lies and rabble-rouses for the simple reason that it has worked to his benefit for more than thirty years. He is failing not due to irrationality, but due to overreach.
To paraphrase Talleyrand, Trump’s antics are worse than crimes; they are blunders.
I don’t believe in evil people.
I don’t think we agree on what constitutes mentally ill. Pathological means diseased or ill. James used the word “sociopath,” which is a form of mental illness. It seems to me that you are saying that mental illness precludes rationality. It doesn’t. Trump’s view of reality is based on the greater glorification of himself. He’s not to the degree that he’s actually harming his business interests, wrecking the GOP, and endangering the country. Nothing he’s doing is for his personal advantage at this point. It’s due to his compulsion to always think himself best. This is not a rational motive. It’s morbid. It’s worked because the guy has spent his life in self-aggrandizement and because he’s a billionaire.
NPD and demagoguery are not mutually exclusive.
…since we have different frames of reference on this.
Prior to the Khan speech at the Democratic Convention, Trump’s actions accrued to his political advantage; and hence were rational. It was the specific target of Trump’s contempt, not the action per se that caused the backfire.
In the absence of a son who gave his life for his country, attacking the Khans would have worked. Because the decision to attack was rational and fit Trump’s history of rational and successful exploitation of fear and bigotry (and since I’m not licensed to practice psychiatry), I’ll forego playing games with the DSM, and call it as I see it.
I find his loud and repeated assertions to have seen videos that don’t exist more striking than the Khan episode. Perhaps because I have had experience with an NPD person who was otherwise functional, I am struck by the similarity between her behavior and Mr. Trump’s.
I strongly agree with mark-bail when he reminds us that NPD and demagoguery (and all the things Paul mentions) are not mutually exclusive.
In my view, this is a both-and situation, rather than an either-or one.
He knows the videos don’t exist but the “facts” that they portend to display fit his world view. No one is arguing Carly Fiorina is mentally ill; she was just a liar who made up seeing videos on Planned Parenthood that didn’t exist since that’s what her base wanted to hear. The only difference between Trumo and any of the other Republicans is that he dropped all dog whistles and pretense and gave them the rawest racism and fear monger the primary base wanted while inventing grand narratives of one man reversing 40 years of deindustrialization to win over swing voters.
And it worked right through the convention, he just went too far in attacking a gold star family and now implying that killing his opponent his ok. And now the media is actually going after him on the business deals while Hillary is hitting the airwaves with good ads. Over 60% of the country finds him repelling, but what worries me is what happens the day after.
Many of our neighbors in communities across our own state feel so fucked by our local economy, under largely single party Dem rule, that they are considering him anyway. I’ve met really nice and tolerant teachers excited about getting kids to vote who are voting for him since the “elites” forgot Rockland or Fitchburg. He’ll win Charlie Baker/Scott Brown country which is sad.
and of course, it was carried out, during a church service.
The consequences for O’Reilly? I saw O’reilly give an award to jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, on a PBS program.
Nobody threw things at O’Reilly, or walked out, or even booed or hissed.
I don’t know if anyone watching at home, besides me, threw up.
People on this thread are operating on the assumption that only someone with some kind of mental issue would talk like Trump. But other people have said similar things, and benefited from what they said.
If Bill O’Reilly can get away with this, and not be an outcast from decent society, don’t be surprised if someone with even few scruples uses the same tactic.
You don’t need a DSM to know where Trump is coming from, you just need some awareness of the type of behavior we all tolerate.
only someone with a mental disorder would talk like Trump.
A lot of people are assuming things I didn’t write.
I’ve argued LOUDLY, here at BMG, that the extremist pro-life groups are terrorist organizations, that the institutional church has blood on its hands, and that Bill O’Reilly should have been punished. I’m not sure it is illegal for Mr. O’Reilly to say what he said, since Mr. Tiller was not a federal official.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that calling for the assassination of a federal judge or a major party nominee for President IS a federal crime. I think it’s the kind of thing nobody should joke about.
I agree that too many Americans not only tolerate but applaud this behavior. Nevertheless, I think that Donald Trump is exceedingly dangerous, vicious, and also a victim of at least one significant personality disorder.
The second amendment has been hijacked and is now understood by the loons that it was put into place by our government to allow ordinary citizens the ability to overthrown this same government. People like Senator Ernst openly admit that they carry a gun that they may choose to use against our government if they want to.
How is this any different from what Trump said? How is this any difference from anyone who believes the second amendment’s intent was for citizens to attack the government?
If it was, Daniel Shays would have been one of our presidents.
It’s time we put this canard to rest and Mr. Trump has opened this discussion once again. He is no different from Gavin Long or any gun nut.
Maura Healey has the guts to tell the truth. It’s time we all did, every day. Screw the NRA.