In the 2016 presidential debates, Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of being a Russian puppet. She cited reasons: his denial of Russian cyber espionage and his election meddling, his enmity towards NATO and his overall admiration for Putin.
The Donald’s response? “No puppet. You’re the puppet!” His reasons? None. It is simply an example of Trump’s primary line of defense, that I call The Pee Wee Herman Defense AKA “I know you are but what am I?”
That is not the only example. He defended against charges of being too friendly with Russia by calling President Obama, who personally warned Putin against meddling in the election, expelled diplomats and also imposed sanctions on Russia over the annexation of Crimea and election interference, “a patsy for Russia. He was a total patsy.” He had a reason this time; he accused Obama of promising Putin “flexibility” regarding a US/NATO missile shield – but Obama installed that shield in 2016.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-calls-obama-a-patsy-for-russia/
In 2016 Hillary called him “temperamentally unfit” to be president. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” Trump turned right around and Pee Wee’d her with “I don’t think she’s all there,” “trigger-happy” and “very unstable.”
When people were concerned about children learning from Trump’s crude, violent and demeaning comments on TV, he asked, “What should parents tell their children about Hillary Clinton’s attacks?”
When she spoke on Trump’s ties to white nationalists, we got, “Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.”
Pressed on his role in promulgating the Obama Birther conspiracy – which he later hypocritically took credit for saving Obama from by demanding his birth certificate (and called it a fake and implicated Obama in the “suspicious death” of a person who verified the certificate in a plane crash) – Trump again tried to turn the charges around. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.”
Accused of sexual harassment, he produced alleged victims of Bill Clinton and said, ““Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”
He accuses Iran of moving ahead with nuclear weapons
when it was he who backed out of Obama’s successful, internationally verified Iran nuclear deal.
The man who illegally, without consent of Congress, ordered assassinated an Iranian general claimed that Soleimani planned a series of “imminent attacks” on US personnel.
His plot to force Ukraine to announce an investigation of Joe Biden is more of the same. “I’m not corrupt. Biden is the corrupt one.”
These are only a few examples. The crowning one is that the man who has told (at last count) over 16000 blatant lies in office calls everybody else Fake News!
The psychiatric term is projection. Sigmund Freud said it’s when people project onto others faults that they cannot accept as their own. It’s linked to – no surprise – narcissism. It’s a form of paranoia that lets a person disown a personal flaw and convince himself that it’s coming at him from external sources. It’s also a way of avoiding responsibility. Saying “it’s not my fault” puts it on the other guy and lets the perpetrator wipe his own hands clean. It absolves him from having to do anything about it.
Even Republicans like Ted Cruz know it. “This man is a pathological liar. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth, in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.” Like any rat, though, he still opposes impeachment.
Republicans in the Senate may have once been appalled by it, but now they embrace projection probably because it’s their last ditch attempt to hang on to some tatters of power. They have claimed again and again that the impeachment of Trump was an unfair partisan sham. Yes, the people who have bragged that they will violate their oath of impartiality in the Senate hearing and do whatever Trump wants are calling the impeachment an unfair partisan sham.
Republicans are used to it themselves. While supporting a regime that is becoming more and more authoritarian, they demonize socialism as tyranny.
Their brain washed or brain dead MAGAs accept it because they use projection too. White supremicists claim that whites are the most discriminated group in America. Supporters of Mr GrabEmByTheP call Democrats sexist. Evangelists who want the Bible taught in schools and to deny LGBTQ rights whine that they are discriminated against. Anti science climate deniers insist that climate change warnings are unscientific.
But these are the people who in polls said that we should pull troops out of Wakanda, that they went to the polls on January 21st and voted against impeachment and that Barack Obama is a gay muslim terrorist and Michelle a man. They also believe that the Mueller Report cleared Trump, that Trump’s wall is being built as we speak, that Trump saved the economy and that they got a great tax break. I’ve talked to MAGAs who firmly believe that Obama was a tyrant who repeatedly violated the Constitution and that Obama caged more kids than Trump. They believe a man who thinks that windmills cause cancer and that he could buy Greenland. It’s reached a point where I don’t know if they actually believe all that nonsense, or just don’t think about it.
We can’t let such people overturn the American desire for rationality, truth and democracy. Trump is not alone in his evil, but he is its leading example. It is imperative – not only for America but for civilization – that if the Senate refuses to do its duty we vote him out in November.
By Kevin P Breen
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