Donald Trump "Is The Most Successful Bio-Terrorist In Human History"

Chauncey Devega, Salon, July 13, 2020:

The June 6 edition of the German newsweekly Der Spiegel described Donald Trump as a "fire devil" and a president who "sets fire to his country." ...

He has shown himself to be the most corrupt president in the history of the United States. ... Donald Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime confidant and adviser Roger Stone as a way of insulating himself from any future charges related to the Russia scandal or other criminal matters. Aided by Trump and his agents' willful malevolence, negligence and cruelty, the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the United States. The country continues its slide towards a second Great Depression.

More than 135,000 Americans have now been killed by the coronavirus. ... [T]he Trump administration and its allies have decided that more people — including public school students, their teachers and their families — should fall ill and die as a means of creating a new "normal" where the disease is no longer viewed as an emergency. ... This is the "economics of barbarism" in practice. ...

Ultimately, Donald Trump's fascism, his apparent mental pathologies, and his sabotaged response to the coronavirus are not discrete and separate things. Rather, they are all connected.

Dr. John Gartner, whom I have interviewed on several previous occasions, is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Gartner is also the founder of the Duty to Warn PAC [and] a contributor to the 2017 bestseller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President and is featured in the upcoming documentary Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump. ...

***

Salon: Trump is surrounded by a maelstrom of events. John Bolton's new book has shown Trump to be dangerously incompetent and a threat to the safety of the American people and the world. Trump's niece's new book shows him to be mentally unwell, evil and cruel to his own family members. The Supreme Court just ruled that Trump's taxes and other financial records must be handed over to prosecutors. Public opinion polls and other metrics show him losing to Joe Biden in a landslide. The George Floyd protests continue across the country. How are you making sense of Trump's mood and mind in this moment?

Gartner: Because of his extreme malignant narcissism, Donald Trump can and should be compared to leaders such as Adolf Hitler. ... Donald Trump is not just incompetent. He's not just delusional. He is not just narcissistic ... Donald Trump's behavior with the coronavirus pandemic is intentional. He is malevolent. He is a first-degree mass murderer. This is a plan.

I am a great believer in the principle of Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is usually the right one. Trump disbanded the pandemic task force. First, Trump said that the virus was not going to come to America. Then he chose not to do more testing. Trump chose to not use the Defense Production Act to make more needed medical supplies and equipment. Trump has admitted to trying to slow down the testing for the coronavirus. Trump has undermined the governors' efforts to protect the public from the virus. Trump even went so far as to encourage astroturf protests to intimidate Democratic governors into reopening for "the economy." Trump has said that he is against people wearing masks — which is the simplest, cheapest and most efficient way to keep us from spreading the virus.

Trump is trying to open the floodgates. He's hosting mass gatherings of people at his rallies and other events. He's doing everything he can to enable the virus. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is going to be the most successful bio-terrorist in human history. Let me repeat myself so there is no confusion. Donald Trump is the most successful bio-terrorist in human history. This is not an accident.

Let me ask the most basic forensic questions: Why? And how?

Trump's behavior is a function of the psychology of a malignant narcissist. If you look at the history of malignant narcissists, whether its Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein, there is something they all have in common. They all kill massive numbers of their own people. ... Do not forget that one of the components of malignant narcissism is sadism. Omnipotent destruction makes malignant narcissists feel powerful. This is especially true if they feel somehow disempowered or otherwise weak.

Trump leads a political death cult. Not wearing a mask during the coronavirus pandemic has become an important symbol of personal loyalty.

Suicidal self-destructive behavior as a sign of loyalty to the Great Leader is a tradition among malignant narcissists. Leaders such as Trump are so unwell that if the people around them and their followers are not stoking their egos then a Trump-type person will turn their rage outward. To the extent that they are not feeling great enough about themselves, they need someone to punish. One of the ways that a Trump or Hitler-type leader does that is to try to make people show loyalty by doing things where they knowingly harm themselves.

The idea that one would lead your own followers to their deaths is not unusual in the broader context of history. This is how malignant narcissists work. But as Americans, we literally cannot wrap our minds around such a thing. Of course, the American news media is also unable to accept such a reality, that there are leaders who would actively hurt their own followers and others. ...

Trump is actually making his followers into bio-weapons. There is a narrative that Donald Trump is crazy, delusional, selfish, and cognitively disabled. Of course, that is true. But Donald Trump is not so stupid that he does not know the consequences of not wearing masks at a large gathering of people. Trump knows what the effect of that will be. Trump has been briefed repeatedly about how not wearing masks will lead to mass death. He knows that. ...

Donald Trump and the Republicans are willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans to the coronavirus in order to save "capitalism" — and of course Trump's reelection chances. This is grotesquely evil behavior. The next step in this ghoulish plan is to force America's schools to reopen in the fall knowing full well that this will kill children, teachers and parents. ... Help me understand Trump's mind. How can he rationalize potentially sacrificing children to this death cult?

It's very hard for relatively normal and mentally healthy people to truly understand how Donald Trump's mind works, to empathize with his thought processes, because it is hard to empathize with someone who truly does not care if he's killing massive numbers of children. Such an outcome does not upset Donald Trump. He is more upset by some idle comment made on Fox News. The deaths of children and other people do not have any emotional meaning to him.

It is also very hard for most people to understand how there's a sinister way in which harming, degrading, destroying and, yes, even killing large numbers of people actually excites and arouses Donald Trump. It all makes him feel powerful. That excitement and arousal and empowerment is an antidote to the emptiness that he feels inside and to the humiliation and mockery that he is experiencing from his critics and the public. ... It is not an accident that when Trump was forced into the White House bunker he ordered the protesters outside to be gassed and attacked. That was Trump's reaction to being made to feel weak by going into the bunker for his protection. Trump's reaction to feeling weak during the George Floyd protests was to invoke the power of the military and martial law in an attempt to declare war on the American people. This is a clear cause-and-effect dynamic. The more humiliated and out of control Donald Trump feels, the more violently and powerfully he feels he needs to strike back. ...

What is your analysis of Trump's rally at Mount Rushmore?

He did everything to feel aggrandized and powerful. In his mind, he could see his face on Mount Rushmore. Trump needs the crowds. He needs them close together, he needs them praising him. Trump had military jets flying overhead and all his supporters singing his praises. But what was Trump's message for Independence Day? All the people who do not praise me are bad. They're evil. ... All those people who don't praise me want to destroy this country and that is not going to happen under my watch because we are going to get them first. Donald Trump takes a perverse pleasure in destruction — and that destruction is the destruction of the American people, the country, our way of life, our actual lives themselves. Donald Trump is reveling in our destruction and our deaths. ... Trump always telegraphs every terrible thing he is ever going to do, and then he does it, and then most people are always shocked. And then the next time Trump says he is going to do something terrible the same people think that it is somehow going to not happen. ... Trump is going to take his behavior all the way to the end. His dangers are not just with the coronavirus but with how there will not be a peaceful transition of power if he loses the 2020 election.

Here is an observation: Trump is going to find a way to steal the 2020 election. And even if defeated at the polls, he still has two months between Election Day and supposedly stepping down in January. These months up to Election Day and then to January will be some of the most dangerous in the country's history. Trump is capable of anything.

I agree. The American people and the world really need to understand that we are heading towards the endgame with Donald Trump. This moment is extremely dangerous because Trump is wounded, rejected and feeling devalued. Trump is going to be a loser and probably go to jail if he is not re-elected. Trump is going to take everyone down with him. But Trump also has enablers in place throughout the government to protect him. This is all very dangerous. ... Again, look at the last days of Hitler. He was losing his mind towards the end, but he was still giving orders and people were still following them. We do not know what crazy orders Donald Trump is going to give and we do not know who will follow them. But whatever Trump does it will be destructive, and he will have followers willing to do what he commands.