Donald Trump’s very specific form of manipulation
We know about Trump’s psychotic behavior. He is a malignant, narcissistic, pathological liar. But he employs a specific manipulative strategy that actually has a name. But I didn’t know that there is a very specific diagnosis. Sidney Blumenthal in the Guardian explains:
Time after time, with predictable regularity, never missing a beat, Donald Trump proclaims his innocence. He always denies that he has done anything wrong. The charge does not matter. He is blameless. But this is only the beginning of the pattern. Then, he attacks his accusers, or anyone involved in bringing him to account, usually of committing the identical offense of which he stands accused.
But it is not enough for him to lash out. Then, he declares himself to be the victim. Whatever it is, he is falsely accused. But his self-dramatization as the wounded sufferer is only half his story: he insists that whoever has accused him is in fact the offender. He emerges triumphant, the martyr, the truth-teller, courageously unmasking the real villain. J’accuse!
Trump’s pattern is textbook manipulation – literally. It has a precise name given to it after decades of academic research. Jennifer Freyd, now professor emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon, developed the theory over her career studying sexual assault, trauma and institutional betrayal. She named the process by which the perpetrator seeks to avoid accountability Darvo – a strategy with the elements of denial, attack, and reversal of victim and offender.
“I named the idea in the 1990s,” Freyd told me. “People can deny an accusation without resorting to Darvo. Why not just say, ‘I’m disturbed by what you’re saying, it doesn’t comport with what I remember, these are important issues, I want to understand.’ You can stick to a firm denial without being a victim. But the viciousness of the attack is intended to be silencing.”
Freyd observes: “The people who use Darvo are different from the people who don’t … It’s a red flag.”
Trump’s behavior in the E Jean Carroll case has been a classic exhibit. The defamation case was brought after Trump said she was “totally lying”, explaining that “she’s not my type”, about her description of his sexual assault of her in a book and a New York magazine article. He issued a formal statement from the White House on 19 July 2019: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms Carroll or New York magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace, and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”
All the elements of Darvo, his familiar pattern, were present in his deflection. He denied the incident occurred: “I’ve never met this person in my life.” He attacked her: “Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves or sell a book or carry out a political agenda.” And he turned the tables to make himself the victim and her the aggressor deserving of punishment: “People should pay dearly for such false accusations.”
In the first defamation trial in 2023, Judge Lewis Kaplan declared that based on the jury’s deliberations Trump had defamed her and committed rape. “… Mr Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’,” he stated. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that.”
The jury awarded Carroll $5m. Trump appeared on CNN the day after the judgment to call the decision “fake news” and her a “whack job”. She amended her defamation lawsuit.
During the second trial, Trump inevitably repeated this pattern. First, he denied the accusation. “She said that I did something to her that never took place,” he testified in a deposition. “There was no anything.” Then, he attacked her: “I know nothing about this nutjob.” Then, he made himself her victim: “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is.” Then, he called her “sick, mentally sick” and labeled her attorney Roberta Kaplan “a political operative”. They had connived for ulterior motives to hurt him.
Then, he lied about an interview she had given, to claim that – even if he never knew her and the event never took place – she said she enjoyed being sexually assaulted by him. “She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay? She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”
In the second defamation trial, the jury delivered a judgment of $83.3m in damages against Trump.
There’s a method to Trump’s madness. The madness is the method – and the method is the madness. It’s more than his malignant narcissism. It’s more than his relentless lying. Conscious or unconscious, it is his invariable reflexive response to the danger of being held responsible for his misdeeds and crimes. Its roots lie in the model of his brutish father. Upon that foundation he added the vicious counsel of Roy Cohn to attack anyone suing him in order to raise the personal cost for his victims, drain them of resources and delay the courts.
Though Trump ranks among the greatest living specimens of misogyny, his blame-casting extends to foes of any gender in every one of his conflicts
And this has now become the defining feature of GOP politics.
…Though Trump ranks among the greatest living specimens of misogyny, his Darvo blame-casting extends to foes of any gender in every one of his conflicts. Trump’s syndrome has become the core of his politics. Just as he is the Maga icon, even exalted as a god, his derangement is the golden calf for his followers. They worship by imitation. His gaslighting about his sexual violence has morphed into the essence of his pseudo-ideology of a debauched party.
The Trump Republicans, apologizing for him, twist their arguments into the Darvo template. In the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, the weaponization committee has institutionalized a warped Darvo construct in its projections on the cave wall of conspiracies and enemies. One day, the FBI is the culprit victimizing Trump; the next, Taylor Swift.
In case after case, Trump applies the blueprint. His closing statement at his New York fraud trial on 12 January was definitive in his application of the complete features of Darvo. He raced back and forth from denial, to attack, to reversal of victim and offender. “This is a political witch-hunt that was set aside by – should be set aside. We should receive damages for what we’ve gone through, for what they’ve taken this company through.” He was the victim.
It is now everything in Trump world:
Trump’s campaign themes largely consist of his defenses, which are adaptations of Darvo. He denies all the accusations. A majority of Republicans believe he is falsely charged. He attacks a host of enemies from E Jean Carroll to Jack Smith, from the judges to their clerks. He is the victim. They are the offenders. Darvo is his shield of innocence.
“Are you thinking of trying to use campaign funds to pay some of the penalties?” a reporter asked Trump after it was disclosed that he had spent $50m in donor money on lawyers’ fees in 2023.
“What penalties?” Trump answered.
“In the New York fraud case and the defamation case.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said. “I mean, that’s been proven as far as I’m concerned.”
Read the whole thing. There’s much more to it. This tactic has to be the single most frustrating thing about Donald Trump and the Republicans right now. They deploy this tactic to great effect and it ends up manipulating not only their own followers but the rest of the culture as well by making it seems as though Trump can get away with anything. And with the exception of the two lawsuits in NY, so far he has.
By the way, there’s some news today about how he acts behind the scenes in his legal cases. E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan appeared on a podcast and talked about the Trump depositions:
The ex-president reportedly freaked out when his legal team provided lunch at his resort for opposing counsel. Like throwing papers, storming out of the room and yelling at his attorney Alina Habba. All because his lawyers extended a basic courtesy. Real stable genius stuff.
But there’s more! Trump apparently referred to Kaplan as a “see you next Tuesday,” which, as many are aware, is a euphemism for calling someone a cunt.
As Kaplan describes:
“We come in the room and I say, ‘I’m done asking questions’ and immediately I hear from the other side, ‘Off the record. Off the record. Off the record.’ So they must have planned it. And he looks at me from across the table and he says, ‘See you next Tuesday.’”
But Kaplan was unaware of the hidden insult:
Kaplan said that she was initially confused, as their next meeting was set for a Wednesday. “You could tell it was like, it was like a kind of a joke again, like teenage boys would come up with. But again, I wasn’t in on the joke,” she said.
“I wasn’t in on the joke, so I had no idea. Then we get into the car and my colleagues are like, ‘Robbie, do you know what that means?’ And I’m like, ‘No, what are you talking about?’ They tell me and I’m like, oh my God, thank God I didn’t know because had I known, I for sure would have gotten angry. There’s no question I would have gotten angry,” Kaplan said.
No kidding. Trump is not only a malignant narcissist, he’s got the mind of a 13 year old boy. He’s pathetic.