The media in the United States has had a long, malignant affair with Donald Trump. CNN televised all of his rallies during the 2016 presidential campaign. It’s time for the media to wake up and realize that reporting about the next election should focus on real stories that inform the truth, not entertain us. Margaret Sullivan, in a Guardian article, quoted Christiane Amanpour about this. Amanpour says1:
“We have to be truthful, not neutral. I would make sure that you (speaking to other journalists) don’t just give a platform…to those who want to crash down the constitution and democracy.”
In the 2024, we could have a repeat election between a liar, who has been charged with 41 felonies by federal and state prosecutors for election subversion, and a current president who has helped us recover from the disastrous Trump years and won the last election. One stands up for democracy, while the other will “crash it down.”
Town Hall
In May, CNN continued its affair with Trump by hosting a town hall in New Hampshire featuring only Trump and CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. This was a shocking decision by CNN’s latest management executives. So, what did we learn about Trump and his views during this town hall? Nothing new. He repeated false claims about the 2020 election, claiming he won and that the election was stolen. He lied about the case he lost to E. Jean Carroll. He was liable for committing sexual abuse and battery. He said he was not found guilty of rape, which was true because it wasn’t proven. But then he said, ” I didn’t do anything else either.” He ridiculed Carroll to the applause of a biased New Hampshire audience.
CNN gave time to this indicted ex-president to do nothing but bully, lie, and give false information about any of the topics brought up by CNN’s Caitlin Collins. This kind of journalism needs to come to an end.
Nasty. Donald Trump and CNN’s Caitlin Collins. During the town hall, Trump made one of “nasty” comments he used more than a dozen times to describe women. He said to Collins: “Simply, you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you.” He’s used it with Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Megan Markle, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Source: CNN.
Malignant Affair
So, what do I mean by the “media’s malignant affair with Donald Trump.” The affair the media has with Trump is a form of malignant normality. The media is making Trump and his right-wing cult normal and acceptable. In my book, The Trump Files, I wrote that Donald Trump presented the United States with what Dr. Robert Jay Lifton calls “malignant normality, which occurs when society begins to see forms of destructive and dangerous behavior as usual.
Now we have an ex-president indicted by district attorneys in New York, Alvin L. Bragg (bookkeeping fraud) and Georgia, Fani T. Willis (election subversion), and by Special federal prosecutor Jack Smith for hoarding national security documents and, in a separate indictment, election subversion.2
Millions of Republicans have sworn allegiance to their leader. And in light of these indictments, the cult is more emboldened. This fact needs to be part of any discussion with or about Trump. It’s an important context when Trump is interviewed.
Psychological Theory
We might say that malignant normality is the psychological theory that explains emperors, narcissists, fascists, and Nazis. In Trump’s case, we might consider him a malignant narcissist. But can experts agree that Trump suffers from malignant narcissism. In Bill Eddy’s Psychology Today article, he points out that some health experts say “Yes;” some say “No;” and many say they can’t say because they’ve never done a clinical interview3.
Eddy reports that the term narcissism was used by Eric Fromm, a psychiatrist in the United States who immigrated from Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. Fromm identified two types of narcissism, “benign narcissism” and “malignant narcissism.” The emergence of Trump onto the political stage has been wrought with his behavior as narcissistic. Can a diagnosis of malignant narcissism be associated with Trump. Fromm writes:
It is a madness that tends to grow in the lifetime of the afflicted person. The more he tries to be a god, the more he isolates himself from the human race; this isolation makes him more frightened, everybody becomes his enemy, and in order to stand the resulting fright he has to increase his power, his ruthlessness, and his narcissism.
Eric From, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (Riverdale, NY: American Mental Health Foundation; First published by Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, 1964), loc. 989 of 2243, Kindle.
You’ll have to decide for yourself. In Eddy’s paper, he cites John Gartner, Ph.D., psychologist at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, who says Trump is a malignant narcissist. Gartner suggests several aspects of Trump’s character that would support a diagnosis of malignant narcissism.4
- He knows more about everything than anyone.
- He has empathy for no one but himself.
- Paranoia—demonization of the press, minorities, immigrants, and anyone else who disagrees with him.
- Sociopathy—one who constantly lie, violate norms and laws, exploits others and shows no remorse.
- Sadism—he takes gleeful pleasure in harming and humiliating other people—his cyberbullying is next to no one.
The media knows these things about Trump, yet they act as if they don’t match reality. The day after the auto union strike, NBC asked Trump about the automaker’s strike. Firstly, why does NBC even ask Trump about the strike? He’s only going to lie and present unfounded fabrications.
Then, on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker asked Trump about going to prison, abortion, the Russian-Ukrainian War. In each case, we didn’t learn anything new. All that was accomplished was what was accomplished on CNN’s town hall. Nothing but time for the bully to spread his lies. Letting Trump have the coveted airtime provided by NBC’s Meet the Press is a travesty of journalism.
References
- Margaret Sullivan, With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways, The Guardian, September 15, 2023.
- Bill Eddy, Malignant Narcissism: Does the President Really Have It, Psychology Today, March 12, 2019.
- Charlie Savage, The four Trump criminal cases: Strengths and weaknesses, The New York Times, News Analysis, August 28, 2023.
- Eddy, Malignant Narcissism
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