Denial and Deflection

This was written Saturday, 4/18/20; publishing was delayed by technical issues.


Denial: psychology: a defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary online)

Deflection: Psychological deflection is seen as a narcissistic abuse tactic used to control the mind and emotions of others. Nevertheless, psychological deflection is not only a narcissistic tool but also a coping mechanism strategy. Individuals who use it seek to mask their own impulses by denying their mistakes and projecting them on the people around them. (https://www.learning-mind.com/psychological-deflection/)

This is the third in a daily series of posts about apparent mental disorders displayed by Donald Trump. The quotes are from the transcript of a presidential COVID-19 press briefing held April 13, 2020. It is old news now, but I use one briefing for these commentaries to provide a snapshot of the president's behavior at one point in time.

Some excerpts mention a video. The president played a campaign-style video about 5 minutes long, featuring several governors praising the president.

The excerpts are not continuous. A double space between paragraphs signals a break in continuity. I have not altered the text. I have removed elapsed-time markings and other non-text material that could impede smooth reading, used italic text to emphasize salient phrases, and inserted a few explanatory words in brackets.

The entire transcript can be read at
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-press-conference-transcript-april-13.

Diogenes---4/18/20


R=Reporter  T=Trump


DENIAL AND DEFLECTION--in italics

T: This is reported by CDC, confirmed by the news, which doesn’t mean anything to me, because they don’t tell the truth. But CDC reported, January 31st not one person has died.
      
T: And so the story in the New York Times was a total fake. It’s a fake newspaper and they write fake stories. And someday, hopefully in five years when I’m not here, those papers are all going out of business, because nobody’s going to want to read them, but now they like them because they wrote about me. [Uncertain reference].


T: Anthony [Fauci] said I saved a lot of lives by doing that [banning China travel]. I mean, am I correct? I don’t want to put words in Anthony’s mouth, by the way, and I like him. Today I walk in, I hear I’m going to fire him. I’m not firing him. I think he’s a wonderful guy. I retweeted somebody, I don’t know. They said fire, doesn’t matter.
R: Did you notice that when you retweeted it?
T: Yeah, I notice everything.
R: So you retweeted it even though it said time to fire Fauci?
T: Well, no, that’s somebody’s opinion. All that is is a opinion.
R: But you read it, and you elevated it.
T: Well, I was called about that. I said, “I’m not firing.” In fact, if you ask your friends in the public relations office, I was immediately called up on that, and I said, “No, I like him. I think he’s terrific.” Because this was a person’s view. Not everybody’s happy with Anthony. Not everybody’s happy with everybody, but I will tell you, we have done a job the likes of which nobody has ever done. The mobilization, getting of equipment, all of the things we’ve done, nobody’s ever done a job like this. We have 50 governors and territories, by the way, people don’t ever mention that. We have territories.

R: What did you do with that time that you bought? The argument is that you bought yourself some time. You didn’t use it to prepare hospitals. You didn’t use it to ramp up testing. Right now, nearly 20 million people are unemployed.
T: You’re so disgraceful. It’s so disgraceful the way you say that. Let me just, listen. I just went over it.
R: Tens of thousands of Americans are dead. How is this [crosstalk 00:35:57] or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis?
T: I just went over it. Nobody thought we should do it, and when I did it-
R: But what did you do with the time that you bought? The month of February. That video has a gap, the entire month of February.
T: You know what we did? What do you do when you have no case in the whole United States?
R: You had cases in February.
T: Excuse me. You reported it. Zero cases, zero deaths on January 17th-
R: January, February, the entire month of February.
T: I said in January.
R: That video has a complete gap.
T: On January 30th-
R: What did your administration do in February for the time that your travel ban bought you?
T: A lot.
R: What?
T: A lot, and in fact, we’ll give you a list. What we did, in fact, part of it was up there. [Referring to the video.]
R: It wasn’t. Your video had a gap.
T: We did a lot. Look, look, you know you’re a fake. You know that. Your whole network, the way you cover it is fake, and most of you, and not all of you, but the people are wise to you. That’s why you have a lower approval rating than you’ve ever had before times probably three.
R: 20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands are dead.
T: And when you asked me that question, let me ask you this, why did Biden apologize? Why did he write a letter of apology? [Also a lie. There was no apology].

R: I don’t think anyone in this room cares about why Joe Biden didn’t apologize to you.
T: No, that’s very important. Why did the Democrats think that I acted too quickly? You know why? Because they really thought that I acted too quickly. We have done a great job. . . . The problem is the press doesn’t cover it the way it should be.
 

Lies, Blame and Paranoia

Faithful readers: I know a series like this can be tiresome to plow through, but as we all know, these facts have to be shouted from the rooftops many times before anyone will take notice. Thank you for your attention and any action you have taken--sharing, discussing, anything.

This is the fourth and final post in a series about apparent mental disorders displayed by Donald Trump. The quotes are from the transcript of a presidential COVID-19 press briefing held April 13, 2020. It is old news, but I use one briefing for these commentaries to provide a snapshot of the president's behavior at one point in time.


Blame shifting: "In part, people are reluctant to admit they have failed because of a general desire to avoid negative social evaluation and disapproval from others. Thus, to save face when things go wrong, people will sometimes shift blame away from themselves by bringing attention to external causes, attempting to obscure their role in causing misfortune." (Lozano, Elizabeth B. and Sean M. Laurent,  "The effect of admitting fault versus shifting blame on expectations for others to do the same." PLoS One; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213276).

Paranoia: "The paranoid personality-disordered person is suspicious of others—this individual thinks that others are out to threaten, betray, exploit, or harm. . . . People with paranoid personality disorder are not normally grounded in reality, nor do they admit that they have negative feelings about other people. They distrust people so much that they will not discuss how they feel, and harbor suspicions for lengthy periods of time."  (Psychology Today online, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/paranoid-personality-disorder)

Some excerpts mention a video. The president played a campaign-style video about 5 minutes long, featuring several governors praising the president.

The excerpts are not continuous. A double space between paragraphs signals a break in continuity. I have not altered the text. I have removed elapsed-time markings and other non-text material that could impede smooth reading, used bold text to emphasize salient phrases, and inserted a few explanatory words in brackets.

The entire transcript can be read at
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-press-conference-transcript-april-13.

Diogenes---4/19/20

R=Reporter  T=Trump
 
If you search "trump lies" you will find a wealth of material from sources ranging from the Boston Globe to YouTube, all documenting falsehoods this president has presented as truth to the American people. Here are just a very few.


LIES IN YELLOW

T: When on January 31st, I instituted the ban, Joe Biden went crazy. He said, “You don’t need the ban.” He didn’t go crazy. He didn’t even know what the hell the ban was, so he didn’t go crazy. But he did call me xenophobic, wait a minute, he called me xenophobic. He called me a racist because… He has since apologized and he said I did the right thing.

T: No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. Think of that. You know, you heard all about ventilators, ventilators, we need ventilators, because they didn’t have them, because the states should’ve had them. No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. No one who has needed a hospital bed has been denied a hospital bed.

T: And I’ve been asking from the beginning, “Why can’t we sterilize and sanitize these masks?” And it turned out we can, and there was a great company in Ohio. They sent us some great equipment and they’re doing that now, and now we’re going to have more than 33 million N95 masks per week will be cleaned, decontaminated, and it’ll be great. It’s something that frankly, I think people should have thought of a long time ago. [Mask sterilization has been in use since early in the outbreak, but is advised only in crisis situations of shortage. Only three reuses are allowed.]
  
BLAME PROJECTION--subject of blame in italics

R: [News about] Theodore Roosevelt has died. Have you decided the status of Captain Crozier?
T: Well, that’s going through the Navy as I understand it. The Navy is going to be making decisions on all of that, and they had a break in. I don’t think the ship should have been stopping in Vietnam when you have a pandemic to be honest with you. I don’t think the captain should have been writing letters. He’s not Ernest Hemingway, as I said before, and he shouldn’t have been writing letters. I don’t know who gave the orders to stop in Vietnam, but they stopped in Vietnam, and all of a sudden they get on and now you have over 500 sailors and people on the ship that are affected. I don’t know whose idea that was, but that wasn’t such a good idea in the middle of a pandemic.

T: And what we did last time is unprecedented. We literally rebuild tests. We rebuilt a whole industry because we inherited nothing. What we inherited from the previous administration was totally broken, which somebody should eventually say. Not only were the cupboards bare as I say, but we inherited broken testing. Now we have great testing.

T: Remember, and you saw the stories, I inherited this administration, Mike [Pence], myself, the whole administration. We inherited a stockpile where the cupboards were bare. There was nothing, and I say it and I’ll say it again, just like we didn’t have ammunition, we didn’t have medical supplies, we didn’t have ventilators, we didn’t have a lot of things that should have been had, and you can read your own stories on that because you know what happened. They didn’t want to spend the money, but we did.



PARANOIA--in yellow

R: What is the status of the funding for the World Health Organization?
T: I’m not happy with the World Health Organization. Not happy with the World Trade Organization either. We’ve been ripped off by everybody. We have, this country, for so many years, has been ripped off by everybody, whether it’s the World Health or World Trade. They’re like, I call them, the Bobbsey Twins. They look at our country, for years and years, we had people that did nothing about it. We’re doing a lot about it.

T: I’ve been brutalized [by the press] for the last four years. I used to do well before I decided to run for politics, but I guess I’m doing okay, because to the best of my knowledge, I’m the president of the United States despite the things that are said.

R: But just to be clear, this [video] was produced by government employees, by people here at the White House, this campaign-style video here?
T: I wouldn’t use the word produced. All they did was took some clips, and they just ran them for you. And the reason they did is to keep you honest.