Trump survived Pussygate unscathed. Will he survive Signalgate unscathed? By Hal M. Brown (It appears that our military and intelligence agencies are being run by Col. Klink and Sgt. Shutlz.)

 

• 

• I wrote this last night and was waiting to proofread it for typos this morning. Then I turned on “Morning Joe” I see that Jeffery Goldberg, whose name everyone following the news now knows, has released the Signal message text chain he originally withheld. They show without a doubt that this messages contained highly sensitive classifiedinformation.

• 

• 

  

  

• It was revealed today that there are other Signal message chats some of which may have included people without authorization to be on them. The talk is about whether what Hegseth having done is a fireable offense. It is being emphasized that one of the people on the chat, Steve Witkoff, was in Russia at the time.

Morning Update:

The verdict of what to call this is in. It is now Signalgate or SignalGate! This is from USA Today.

As if we need an example of the level of the incompetence and nincompoopery that Trump sold the Senate with his appointments, we only have to look at what may or may not come to be commonly called Signalgate. (Update: It is now Signalgate) The following is all outdated. This reference in Wikipedia needs to be revised: The incident has been coined "Signalgate" by some in the media.^[2][3][4])

This is from Foreign Policy:

Wikipedia already has an entry where the term Signalgate is used. They note three instances where the term Signalgate was used including in the Foreign Policy article.

There is only one “gate,” Watergate, which sent people to jail and brought down a president. It was the gate that made gate a suffix. 

Hillary Clinton’s Emailgate may have contributed to her losing the election. There’s no way to know how much it did, if it had any effect at all.

Wikipedia has a list of over 800 scandal “gates.”. Aside from the most famous, Watergate, they range from Janet Jackson’s “nipplegate” to those I doubt many people have heard of like “tomato gate.”

Pussygate (described here in the Access Hollywood entry)  is on the list. It never made it into the vernacular. Perhaps this is because the term is so crude or because it never effected Trump’s political career. Many publications writing about the Access Hollywood bus recording never spelled out what he said writing instead that Trump’s words were “you can grab them by the p**sy.” It never became a gate because it barely was a scandal.

If anything, Pussygate may have helped Trump burnish his image as both untouchable politically and as a man other misogynistic men envied.

Ironically, considering what has just happened, Emailgate is on the list. This describes the scandal over Hillary Cinton’s email server.

I doubt Signalgate will be Trump’s Watergate, but this does have some potential to seriously harm his reputation for hiring the best and the brightest. 

If Trump has to fire one person and blame them for the entire thing it would be a bad look but he’d get over it. The person most likely to be blamed and fired may be the person whose fault it possibly was. Lucky for Trump he has someone nobody has heard of possibly on the staff of Mike Waltz, who also is someone nobody has heard of, or possibly Waltz himself.

Trump blames unnamed ‘lower level’ staffer for Waltz having reporter’s number Politico.

Excerpt:

In his revelation of the incident on Monday, Goldberg wrote that he was added to the encrypted conversation, presumably inadvertently, after receiving “a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz.”

Of course the scandal wouldn’t be a scandal if someone hadn’t included Jeffrey Goldberg in the message stream. However, since it is now out, the scandal is made worse because these top brains were using Signal in the first place.

Another scandal waiting to emerge is where Trump was in all this. Why didn’t he know about it when it had been all over the news for two hours before he spoke to the press. Another question is where was he when the raids were going on? It would seem that if there was a Situation Room photo op like the one for the bin Laden raid to be had, Trump would have made sure he was there.

Anyone who saw the Senate hearing will know why I made this image:

None of the people above, including Sgt. Shultz, who worked for the clueless Nazi Col. Klink, are the best and the brightest. Those testifying before the Senate aren’t Nazis, but what they do have in common with Nazis is slavish loyalty to a dictator.

Update: Watch this.

My previous Substacks If you are reading this here please consider reading what I post on Substack and also subscribing. It is free.

Recommended:

..

If Trump was told and forgot about what was reported by The Atlantic this could be solid evidence he has dementia, By Hal M. Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist.

 

Read my previous Substacks here. They are always free. Please consider subscribing.

Short term memory loss is one of the primary symptoms of early dementia. I’ve been agnostic on what other mental health professionals point to as indications of his having dementia. I see this as possibly being just as plausibly Trump feleing unleashed and more majic than usual when he goes off on a rant.

Read:

Also read this earlier essay:

The June 2016 Article in The Atlantic wasn’t the most alarming early article about how dangerous Trump’s psychopathology was. That would be Dr. John Gartner’s Donald Trump's malignant narcissism is toxic in USA Today published on Mar. 4, 2017. The Atlantic does feature it as their cover story and it doesn’t have a particularly unflattering photo of the preening nacrssist who is so concerned about how he is depicted. See what I wrote about Trump’s obsession with how he looks yesterday.

Here are two other 2017 Atlantic articles, one of them has Trump on it and the other a sinking White House.

The Atlantic has not been kind to Donald Ttump. It is clearly on his shit list.

The the psychologist’s article in the June, 2016 edition wasn’t effusive in praising him. It thought it was rather mild. But it is by a clincial psychologist who did not say he was the most mentally healthy person in the world. I’d be surprised if he didn’t have a copy of the magazine given to him because he was on the cover.

It’s possble this was an early contributor to Trump’s animosity toward the magazine.

(I published a portion of the following yesterday.)

Here’s a summary of the article:

In the 2016 presidential election, Republican nominee Donald Trump has thrown this year’s contest for President of the United States into a tailspin. A conventional presidential candidate, he’s not.

In June 2016, the Atlantic Monthly ran a front page cover story covering the psychology and mind of Donald Trump. For political scientists, fundamental features of human personality—such as extroversion and narcissism—help shape the distinctive leadership styles of our elected officials and the decisions they make. Dan P. McAdams writes about Trump’s dispositions, cognitive styles, motivations and self-conceptions that comprise his unique psychological makeup.

The Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona has assigned the Atlantic Monthly article for summer reading. Freshman and transfer students have been given a copy of June’s Atlantic Monthly to read up on Trump and other current political events. When school resumes in September, professors will discuss McAdams’s article with students in various courses and at department events.

Read the Atlantic Monthly article here. 

Trump may have just revealed the most compelling evidence that he has early dementia. This happened when he was asked about the number one story of the past two days. 

You have to actually watch this video to understand my suggestion that Trump’s reaction to being asked about the security breach could be strongest indication Trump now has dementia.

Excerpt:

Asked about Monday's story by The Atlantic that top cabinet officials and aides used Signal and texted war plans to a reporter, Trump said, "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it's not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"

Trump added in his comments that it was the first he was hearing about the alleged sharing of the information.

There aren’t too many plausible explanations why Trump didn’t have a coherent answer. Either none of the officials in on the Signal chat didn’t know that the news had come out that the editor of The Atlantic revealed that he was in on the classified message chain. How could that be possible since it was the main story in the news for two hours? They should know that Trump could have learned about it from watching TV. How could they risk Trump finding out about it not from them but on TV?

Watch that video of Trump. He appears confused. He seems to know nothing about the incident. He launches into an attack against The Atlantic. 

If Trump was told about this or learned about it on TV, or was told about it by an official, and forgot about it, one objectively has to call this short term memory loss. This is a major symptom of dementia.

Even if Trump had no knowledge of the security disaster he was clearly put off balance by the question. Going with this explanation would mean that he jumped to the conclusion that this was fake news because it was reported in The Atlantic. 

If Trump was not the volatile angry person he is and for whatever reason he wasn’t aware of this he would have known that The Atlantic is a credible news source. He would have had the reporter who asked the question carefully explain to him what was reported in the story. 

This would have put Trump in the worse than embarrassing position of having to throw some or all of his national security officials under the bus. He would have to say that they were negligent in not keeping him in the loop and that he would investigate why this top secret information was shared with the editor of The Atlantic.

Everyone so far is talking about other aspects of this story. I suggest we all look at this possibly being this is the strongest evidence to date that he may have dementia.

Read my previous Substacks.

The president's preening narcissism, again! By Hal M. Brown

Please go to Substack to read this with the photos by clicking here.  

This is unformatted. It is always best to read my posts on Substack.

For this essay click here or below. Please consider subscribing to my free Substack

This is what Trump posted on Truth Social at 5:26 PM last night. Here’s the text: "Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before. The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older. In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one, but many people from Colorado have called and written to complain. In fact, they are actually angry about it! I am speaking on their behalf to the Radical Left Governor, Jared Polis, who is extremely weak on Crime, in particular with respect to Tren de Aragua, which practically took over Aurora (Don’t worry, we saved it!), to take it down. Jared should be ashamed of himself!"

 This is making the news both in Colorado and around the country. Below, from, Colorado Poltics: This is from Time: It is making news in the homeland of the artist. This is from the British publication The Telegraph. Here’s the painting of Barack Obama: One might think that this is more than merely Trump resenting that President Obama’s picture seems to show him looking better than he does. Could it be that deep, deep, down in the murky morass of Trump’s unconscious he is jealous of the president who he calls Barack Hussein Obama? This is the dictionary definition of preen: (of a bird) straighten and clean its feathers with its beak: robins preened at the pool's edge | [with object] : the pigeon preened her feathers. • (of a person) devote effort to making oneself look attractive and then admire one's appearance: adolescents preening in their bedroom mirrors. • (preen oneself) congratulate or pride oneself: it did not prevent them from preening themselves on their achievement. The first person to use the term “preening narcissism” to describe Trump in an article was Pulitzer Preze winning columnist Jennifer Senior (Wiki profile) writing for The New York Times. It was in this article written during the pandemic: President Trump Is Unfit for This Crisis. Period. His narcissism is a grave danger to our health. The article was illustrated with a photo with this caption: President Trump boarding Air Force One in Florida on Monday. Reports over the weekend said the White House overruled government health officials who wanted to advise older people against flying. I was struck by one term in what she wrote, in bold below: And of course, it was at that same news conference that Trump infamously said, “I like the numbers being where they are,” in explaining why he was reluctant to let passengers, some of whom have tested positive for the virus, off the Grand Princess cruise ship floating off California (it has since been given permission to dock in Oakland). That news conference was, to me, the most frightening moment of the Trump presidency. His preening narcissism, his compulsive lying, his vindictiveness, his terror of germs and his terrifying inability to grasp basic science — all of it eclipsed his primary responsibilities to us as Americans, which was to provide urgent care, namely in the form of leadership. It’s preposterous for Trump to resist determining how widespread this epidemic is. Yet right now, the United States isn’t reporting how many people have been tested; the C.D.C. pulled the number from its website. Late last week, an extraordinarily detailed article by The Atlantic, counting state by state, put that number at only 1,895. In South Korea, the number was more than 140,000. (Which Trump dismissed as “sampling.” It was not. It was testing, straight and simple.) I wrote about Senior calling Trump a preening narcissist and posted it in Daily Kos: Trump was captured in one paragraph and one catchphrase by NY Times OpEd writer Jennifer Senior This is the illustration I made for this: What I wrote there had no particular content which was original with me. I just wanted to share her use of the term “preening narscisst” because it was the first I’d heard it and it described one aspect of Trump so well. It turned out that of the 1,700 pieces I posted on Daily Kos this one received the most recommendations (471) and it had 188 comments. I also wrote: "Don't rain on my pomade" president, the pathetic preening narcissist is getting his due with this illustration: I discovered this in this RawStory article: 'Nobody likes a bad picture of themselves': Trump rages that Obama painting is 'wonderful'. RawStory used a bad picture of Trump to illustrate this article: The least noxious and dangerous part of Trump’s narcissism is that it has to do with his appearance. If only he was just a strutting peacock dispalying his feathers or a crowing rooster ruling and impregnating all the chickens in a henhouse. Put another way, Trump thinks he is the cock of the walk. The origins of this idiom are somewhat unclear, but it’s believed to have originated in rural England during the 18th century. At that time, cockfighting was a popular pastime among farmers and other working-class people. The winner of each fight was considered to be the “cock of the walk,” or the top rooster in the pecking order. Trump, if he believed in God, would think he was God’s gift to women because he’s such a hunka burning love. Trump’s has many other characteristics besides narcissism that makes him the most dangerous president in history. I wrote about this here: Sadists ® U.S: Trump and The Dark Tetrad, By Hal M. Brown It should be obvious that Trump is an example of someone who has all of the traits of The Dark Tetrad: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism The most dangerous aspect of his narcissism looked at in isolation is that he believes he knows more about everything than anybody else. He has said that he has the biggest brain which to him means he is more intelligent than anybody else. He has surrounded himself with toadies who have far more knowledge in their areas of expertise than he does, but when Trump doesn’t agree with them they disagree with him at their peril.  

Addendum: 

 This was one of the comments I posted on my Daily Kos piece: Michael D'Antonio, the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" and co-author with Peter Eisner of "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence." wrote: ...the problem is not so much the President's overweening self-regard but his inability to recognize the needs of others. This problem, invariably a characteristic of the truly narcissistic... In the current crisis, the problem is not so much the President's overweening self-regard but his inability to recognize the needs of others. This problem, invariably a characteristic of the truly narcissistic, makes it difficult if not impossible for someone to put others first. In families, it can be evidenced by the parent who buys himself a new car when the rent is overdue. In countries, it is seen when a leader can't seem to see what people need in a moment of crisis. Whether he's throwing paper towels into a crowd amid death and devastation in Puerto Rico or mocking victims of sexual assault, Trump has shown himself to be callous with enough regularity that he has taught us to cringe when we see him in a moment where concern for others is required. Remember how he joked about crowd sizes when he visited a hospital after a mass shooting in El Paso? How about the time, at the beginning of his term, when he stood at a memorial for fallen intelligence officers and bragged about his own intellect? Compassion, which is the opposite of narcissism, is as essential to the presidency as any trait and presidents of both parties have shown it often. We all remember the moving responses from Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing, George W. Bush after the attacks of 9/11 and Barack Obama after the Charleston church shooting. It is something we have relied on from our leaders. It is also the piece so often missing from Trump's response to difficult times. This is the man, who, a Huffington Post video showed, needed an emotional cheat sheet for a meeting with survivors of school shootings. That the prompts encouraged him to say, "I hear you," is all the evidence we need to know that the White House staff recognizes that the President struggles when it comes to compassion.

How a few comments to a HUFFPOST article comparing Trump to Hitler is a snapshot of divided America, By Hal M. Brown (The article is about Trump's anti-trans rants, but comments may show that a lot of men suffer from castration anxiety.

 

I read The Nazis Made A Horrifying Move In 1933. I'm Terrified Trump Is Now Doing The Exact Same Thing.

“Until recently, the question remained theoretical. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that President Trump is running plays straight out of Hitler’s playbook.”

The author, Ali Moss has a Substack where she also published this article.

I made this comment on HUFFPOST:

Then I looked over the comments and got the idea for today’s Susbtack.

The comments section of HUFFPOST continues to be an accurate representation of the dichotomy of viewpoints between Americans. On the one side we have those who condemn the author of this article and the entire idea that transgender children actually are born that way. These posts are sometimes crude and angry. They sometime say any comparison of Turmp with Hitler is, not always in these words, Trump derangement syndrome.

On the other side we have people who agree with the author that what Trump is doing has horrifying similarities to what Hitler did. These commenters tend to be both well thought out and respectful.

I looked at the comments and found a thread in response to what Roberta Powell posted. She was responding to a comment I can’t see because it was removed:

You can read it below. There are several typos.

• Roberta Powell

  We are there. He has labeled the same people as criminals, nonexistent or enemies. LGBTQ, DEI, foreign born, the press, the universities, libraries and liberals are lunatics destroying the American dream. And just like 1933 Germany he found a violent minority who agree. He oiks very elserlyfound more that join him for their own gain. Hitler was not 80 years old. Trump is. Trump's Reich ls led by the elderly but enforced by the middle aged. They have no limits. What laws they do not remove they break. This is a far right lunatic political party with an opposition that sits back to let the right do damage and lose support. We know we are not represented in Congress by either party. Unless we join the right wingers we are alone. We are there. It is 1930 Germany here in the U.S.A. and a depression is being set up. It's going to get very bad here.

  • LAXMAN FIVE

    So you like males on female sports teams and in their locker rooms right liberal? Only a Nazi would be against that. Right.

    • Two term Papaw

      All three of them!!!!

      Meanwhile MAGA can’t afford groceries without a second low wage job

    • Roberta Powell

      It's sports. I see huge muscular "born girls" and dainty, feminine "born boys" being used as an excuse to destroy every freedom our ancestors fought for. It's insane. I don't see the point. Why force girls to compete with transgender boys? It's not fair. Any athlete born female could take hormones and go through surgeries and compete against girls according to Trump. And they are? Just to win a high school trophy? That's nuts. And when girls compete with boys the girls still win sometimes. I think that is your real objection. Get over it and try harder.

  • undefined undefined

    DEI is racist and a man can't be a woman princess.

    • Roberta Powell

      But they can! DEI and transgenders can do their jobs.

• Susan Ortiz

  Some how her trans 11 year old had the freedom of speech intact to address the crowd under this nazi regime. How does that work?

  • Trump's Fascist Regime

    Ask the Columbia university protesters...

• Daniel Pedraza

  30 minutes ago

  Of course he is. His own daughter said he sleeps with copy of mine kempf by his bed. The entire DEI fraud that is a major Republican talking point is just a clever way to move towards white supremacy That's all it is.

  • Halle Piño

    You think that's "clever"?!

    Seems pretty transparent to me.

• Beef Supreme

  Another woman emotionally manipulated by the Big Media Propaganda Machine into feeling terrified. How sad.

Roberta Powell replied to something I added to the comments:

Ha! How is Trump different than Hitler?

• Hal Brown

  The similarities outweigh the differences. Hitler was a stable psychopath. Trump is an unstable psychopath. I am writing my Substack and knowing if you are the person I think you are will add more to it.

Just added:

Trump has had so many big lies beside the one about him really having won the 2020 election that led to his re-election that there’s no one lie we can pick out as the biggest of the big lies. My choice is that the biggest election outcome defining big lie was that the reason he servived the assassination attempt was that God ordained this. When I saw the photo of him with his fist raised I knew he couldn’t lose. 

There were other big lies such as that the MAGA thugs who assaulted the Capitol were patriots. Trump has also managed to make the entire trans issue into a big lie. In the inconvenient fact don’t mater MAGA-sphere it is a big lie that there are only two genders. What the hell does the Mayo Clinic know?

As a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapist I see things like this through a Freudian lens. My analysis of why Trump’s anti-trans fear-mongering resonates with so many men is that they are insecure about their own masculinity. They have a deeply buried unconscious fear of castration. I would venture to speculate that this manifests itself in symbolism in their dreams.

This is how Wikipedia defines castration anxiety:

Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penis—a derivative of Sigmund Freud's theory of the castration complex, one of his earliest psychoanalytic theories.The term refers to the fear of emasculation in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

Freud regarded castration anxiety as a universal human experience. It is thought to begin between the ages of 3 and 5, during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. In Freud's theory, it is the child's perception of anatomical difference (the possession of a penis) that induces castration anxiety as a result of an assumed paternal threat made in response to their sexual proclivities. Although typically associated with males, castration anxiety is thought to be experienced, in differing ways, by both sexes.

In the literal sense, castration anxiety refers to a child's fear of having their genitalia disfigured or removed as punishment for Oedipal desire

I wonder whether if there was the research into gender identity and gender reassignment surgery in Freud’s lifetime whether he would have considered how he interpreted dreams about castration.

It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to come up with a Freudian explanation about someone’s unconscious fears when they lied and obsessed about the size of crowds that came to hear them speak. Likewise, if someone depicted themselves in computer generated images as muscular superheros sometimes carrying big guns, you don’t have to be Freud to speculate about their unconscious fears. Fake pro-wrestling crap, and the very worst, his need to sexually dominate women… I could go on but I will spare you.

Read my recent Substacks.