by Bill Eddy
Nixon proved lawless and paranoid. He illegally wiretapped and spied on
his perceived enemies and hired a group of thugs to break into Democratic
National Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington.
In 1973, when federal investigators began looking into his crimes, he
fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Nine months later, the
US House of Representatives filed articles of impeachment against Nixon
who resigned from office less than two weeks afterward.
High- Emotion Media
Nixon had an adversarial relationship with the news media before he even
ran for the office of president. He blamed the media for his loss to John F.
Kennedy in his run for president in 1960.
However, in January 1968, before his comeback presidential election
campaign got going, he met Roger Ailes when he appeared on The Mike
Douglas Show, a television variety show, which was watched by seven
million housewives. Ailes was the show’s producer and Nixon soon
hired Ailes to teach him how to appear warmer and more human on
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screen. But that was not enough for Nixon. His battle with the media
continued.
Nixon, like Lyndon Johnson before him, realized the political value of
prime- time speeches carried free by the networks. Faced with an increas-
ing number of presidential addresses, the networks started to seek balance
to this powerful White House platform by following them with commen-
tary. So while the networks carried the speech, to Nixon’s great chagrin,
they followed it with analysis and criticism.
Nixon would not stand for this. Within two weeks, the administration dis-
patched Vice President Spiro Agnew to deliver a withering assault on the
networks in front of a Republican audience in Des Moines. The networks
dutifully carried the speech live after the White House instructed them
that it was in their best interest to do so.212
Nixon went on to look into ways that he could attack the networks by
using the Federal Communications Commission, the Internal Revenue Ser-
vice, and the Department of Justice. He did succeed in winning some con-
cessions from them, for instance, CBS agreed to drop its immediate analysis
after presidential and vice- presidential speeches.213
Nixon used the media to get his emotionally repetitive message out about
law and order. But he also tried to get his message out in isolation, by blocking
any responses to his speeches (and those of his vice president) by the media.
5 5 5
Donald Trump
At the time of this writing (January 2019), Donald J. Trump is president of
the United States. It’s unknown how long he will stay in office as there are
many investigations going on about his possible election collusion with the
Russian government in 2016 and other possibly fraudulent financial matters.
Yet his political base sticks with him, he has a Republican majority in the
Senate, and the Supreme Court is majority conservative, including two of
his own appointees. And he has already filed for his re- election bid in 2020.
Regardless of the outcome of these investigations, his election stirred up
a heated national debate over whether he is dangerous or good for America;
whether he is a pathological liar or authentic; and whether democracy has
been harmed or strengthened by his presidency.
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Trump’s Early Years
Donald Trump was born into a wealthy real estate family in New York City.
Apparently, he was brash and difficult to manage, even from an early age. He
was known as a bully who wanted to overpower people. If he made a false
statement, he would simply defend it and repeat it several times to make
others believe it was true.
In elementary school, Donny impressed classmates with his athleticism,
shenanigans and refusal to acknowledge mistakes, even one so trivial as
misidentifying a popular professional wrestler. . . .
“When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basi-
cally the same,” the 70-year- old presumptive Republican nominee once
told a biographer. “The temperament is not that different. ”214
Trump’s father taught him that there were winners and losers in life, and
that Trumps had to be winners. “Be a killer,” his father told his sons, as if
training them to develop narcissistic traits.215
High- Conflict Personality
Trump appears to have numerous Targets of Blame, a lot of all- or- nothing
thinking and solutions, frequent unmanaged emotions and extreme behav-
ior, and threats of extreme behavior.
When the younger Trump became a Manhattan real estate developer, he
was extremely demanding and inconsistent with his employees. He blamed
them for his own decisions.
“Who said to make this ceiling so low?”
“You knew about this, Donald,” Hyde replied. “We talked about it, if you
remember, and the plans—”
Abruptly Donald leaped up and punched his fist through the tile. Then
he turned on Hyde in a rage. . . . The tirade went on at great length as
Trump “humiliated [Hyde] in front of twenty people, colleagues and
professionals. ”216
Over the course of the first two years of his presidency, it was common for
me to hear people of both political parties discussing his narcissistic traits.
Little was said about sociopathic traits; however, this too started becoming
a topic of discussion after several of his cohorts were convicted of crimes
committed while working for him. Does he have a personality disorder? I
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104 Part II: The Fantasy Crisis Triad Worldwide
won’t answer that question because it is a mental health diagnosis. You will
have to decide for yourself.
Fantasy Crisis
There are so many examples of Trump’s use of Fantasy Crisis Triads to gain
power that I will only focus on one in detail here, Mexican immigrants. I
will mention several others briefly, but how he has handled the immigration
issue is a good example of how he has promoted and handled all the rest.
In 2010, after years of donating to both Democratic and Republican political
candidates (80 percent to Democrats at that time), he spoke with consultants
and consciously decided to run for President as a conservative Republican. 217
In 2011, perhaps as a campaign warm- up , he widely promoted the
extreme view of some Republicans that President Barack Obama (an
African- American elected president in 2008) was born in Africa and there-
fore not allowed to be president. This apparently resonated with a majority
of Republicans. In 2016, he admitted that Obama was born in the US (in
Hawaii), but he was so successful with his repetition of this fantasy crisis
about Obama that even a year later 51 percent of Republicans still believed
Obama was born in Africa. 218
Trump then focused
on Mexican immigration:
In preparation for his presidential bid, he instructed his aides to listen
to thousands of hours of conservative talk radio. They reported back to
Trump that “the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues,” one of
which was immigration.219
For this crisis, Trump claimed that Mexicans were illegally pouring
across the southern United States border, hurting unemployed citizens’ job
prospects and creating terrible danger for US citizens. He didn’t mention
that the number of Mexicans coming north into the United States was the
lowest it had been since 2009.
There are more Mexicans leaving the United States than coming in.
According to the Pew Research Center, there was a net outflow of 140,000
from 2009 to 2014. If Trump builds his wall, he’ll lock more Mexican
immigrants in than he’ll keep out. . . .
One study of 103 cities between 1994 and 2004 found that violent crime
rates decreased as the concentration of immigrants increased. Numerous
studies have shown that a big share of the drop in crime rates in the 1990s
is a result of the surge in immigration.220
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Fantasy Villains
Despite these facts, Trump went ahead and made Mexican immigrants into
his fantasy villains. In his very first speech when he announced his candi-
dacy, he said this:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not
sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have
lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re
bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I
assume, are good people.221
Fantasy Hero
In the same speech, he went on to say that he would be the incredible hero,
saving America and making it great again.
I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created. I tell you that.
I’ll bring back our jobs from China, from Mexico, from Japan, from so
many places. I’ll bring back our jobs, and I’ll bring back our money.222
And of course, at his presidential inauguration he famously said: “I alone
can fix it. ”223 The fantasy hero.
Looking back on his “Mexican rapists” announcement speech, we realize
that it’s very similar to the speeches he has continued to make throughout
his time in office. He is brilliant at using emotional repetition, even repeat-
ing his own phrases on a regular basis.
And his solution to the fantasy crisis of Mexicans pouring in?
I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe
me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on
our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.224
Of course, this too was a fantasy and Mexico was never going to pay for
it. By January 2019, almost two years into his presidency, his overwhelm-
ingly Republican congress had still refused to provide the funding for his
great wall. Putting up this wall would be humiliating for Mexico, but making
them pay for it would be doubly so, and totally unrealistic.
This statement fits with a personality that is into dominating and
humiliating others without empathy or remorse, with a bit of paranoia and
a touch of sadism thrown in. These are the characteristics of a malignant
narcissist. Could his first speech indicate that Trump is one? He certainly
has Targets of Blame. From the first day of his presidential campaign, the
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106 Part II: The Fantasy Crisis Triad Worldwide
signs of an extreme Wannabe King were already there for those who knew
what to look for.
More Fantasy Crises
Trump has had many other fantasy crises. He put a lot of energy into trying to
eliminate Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare
expansion that was promoted by his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Obamacare (ACA) repeal. After
the election, polls showed that the majority of Americans actually supported
the ACA and didn’t want it repealed.225
The Republican Congress did not fall in line with the new president on
this issue after all, and Trump’s efforts to end it failed when the Senate gave
the repeal thumbs down six months into his presidency in July 2017.
Since Trump became president, his promise to repeal and replace
the Affordable Care Act is nowhere close to being fulfilled, despite his
repeated, confident assertions on the campaign trail that it could be done
in just a day. The failure of health- care legislation in the Senate this week
shows Trump still has not learned how to navigate Congress—and how
much he is struggling to be the dealmaker, fighter and winner he por-
trayed himself to be to voters.226
Another fantasy crisis for Trump was his claim that scientific reports on
climate change were a liberal plot against business and he did not believe in
it. So early in his administration he cancelled the participation of the United
States in the Paris Climate Accord, which had been painstakingly negotiated
among many countries.227
He decided that trade wars were “easy to win” and attacked Canada
and European allies, along with China. Although some politicians and
economists agree that the United States needed to address trade issues
with China, Trump’s eager pursuit of wide- ranging trade wars was his
idea and his alone—another demonstration of his all- or- nothing think-
ing. He even lost his own appointed chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn,
over it.228
With Canada, he said there was a terrible trade deficit, but he only
mentioned goods. When services were taken into account, the US actually
had a positive balance in trade with Canada. Even though this was the case,
Trump forced the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agree-
ment (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. Although only minor changes
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were made (to the relief of most politicians and economists), Trump claimed
a huge victory.229
This surprised almost no one, as his grandiose claims are growing quite
familiar to most Americans. After the Democrats won back control of the
House of Representatives in the November 2018 congressional elections,
indications are that Trump is starting to lose his grip, even with his base of
white working- class men. “[I]t is no surprise that more than half of white
working class men now believe that Mr. Trump is ‘self- dealing’ and cor-
rupt. ”230 Reality is beginning to set in.
US Presidential Election 2016
Donald Trump decided to base his campaign on Mexican immigrants, Mus-
lims, journalists, China, and many other fantasy crises. Figure 5 is a sum-
mary of how his Fantasy Crisis Triads worked in emotionally splitting the
voters four ways, resulting i
n his election win in 2016. Although his percent-
age of votes was slightly less than his opponent, Hillary Clinton, he won in
the Electoral College, which gives states with smaller populations an advan-
tage over more populous states.
Trump won nearly 63 million votes, which is 28 percent of the total pos-
sible votes. Hillary Clinton won nearly 66 million votes, which is 29 percent.
Third parties won nearly 8 million votes, which is 4 percent.231 This leaves 39
percent of eligible adults who didn’t vote at all in the 2016 election.232
Most of the voter information I use here comes from a detailed analysis
by three political science researchers published late in 2018 in a book titled
Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Mean-
ing of America. The 4-Way Voter Split group analysis is my own.
LOYALISTS
Trump’s support included Republicans who shared his negative views of his
various Targets of Blame. For example, according to polls, “68 percent of
Republican primary voters believed that Trump’s statements about Mexi-
can immigrants being rapists who bring drugs and crime into the country
was ‘basically right.’”233 But approximately one- third of Republicans did not
agree with those statements and didn’t vote for him in the primary election.
“Among Republicans who did not support Trump in the primary, nearly
seven in ten (69%) voted for him in the general election.” They stayed loyal to
the Republican Party candidate.
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108 Part II: The Fantasy Crisis Triad Worldwide
HCP
(Fantasy Hero)
Donald Trump
Loyalists
(For Trump)
28%
Targets of Blame
(Fantasy Villains)
Hillary Clinton
Mexican Immigrants
Journalists
Muslims
African-Americans
Pres. Barack Obama
China, EU, Canada
Bill Clinton
Etc.
Moderates
Resisters
(For Hillary Clinton)
(For 3rd Parties)
29%
4%
Dropouts
(Didn’t Vote)
39%
FIGURE 5 . US presidential election 2016—4-way voter split . Copyright © 2019 Bill Eddy, All Rights Reserved, Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths—And How We Can Stop, Berrret -Koehler Publishers MODERATES
Moderates are the emotionally mild group of voters, which includes many