Trump Warns: Don’t Make Me Hit You

Filed in National by on October 12, 2016

Josh Marshall (TPM) refers to Donald Trump as an abuser. The description is accurate.

In The Abuser’s House: By any pre-2016 standard we know, the entirety of angry, blustering manner would be fatal for a presidential candidate. But we’ve been living with this guy for a year and a half. We all have a little bit of the trauma of living in the home of an abuser now. We’re accustomed to it. To a degree it starts to feel normal.”

Isn’t it frightening how acclimated we’ve all become to Trump’s behavior? How normal it feels? How we’ve stopped focusing on Trump’s everyday awful words and actions; how he’s raised our bar as to what’s outrageous. This is how abuse works. Outsiders are shocked by what the abused tolerates and excuses on a daily basis. The abused no longer sees the day-to-day abuse – they’ve normalized that. What they worry about is unleashing the monster, unaware that the monster has no leash.

Facing The Abuser’s Rage: At the moment, the institutional GOP and its key leaders are exceptionally weak and vulnerable, even helpless. The best example: even as he continues to attack them, threaten a cataclysmic election outcome, they cannot even withdraw their endorsements. One senator who dropped him the day after the ‘grab’ tape leaked took him back today. Like an abuser who takes out his personal failures and frustrations and rages on his wife and his children, Paul Ryan and the GOP are now alone in the house with Donald Trump. He is angry and the prospect of defeat will no doubt make him angrier. In Trump’s world of displacement, abuse and vengeance turning against the GOP is the most logical thing in the world. [emphasis mine]

Paul Ryan states he will no longer defend Trump… but he won’t be filing for divorce. Meanwhile, Trump piles on:

“The shackles are some of the establishment people that are weak and ineffective people within the Republican party, senators and others, and Paul Ryan, led to a certain extent by Paul Ryan, being nasty to the nominee,” Trump replied.

When asked if Republicans were holding Trump back, the Republican nominee responded, “Not a question of holding back, no, but they’re not giving support.” He then said he may be better off without their support.

O’Reilly noted that in the same tweet, Trump said that without the “shackles,” he could now campaign his own way. He asked Trump how he could be more outspoken.

“I don’t think I’m that outspoken to be honest with you Bill,” Trump replied.

And then, yet again, he goes after John McCain as a way to excuse his behavior:

O’Reilly noted that McCain dropped his endorsement because of the 2005 tape.

“Oh give me a break! He’s never heard salty language before?!” Trump said in respsonse. “You know John McCain who has probably the dirtiest mouth in all of the Senate has never heard — You know he talked about ‘lewd’, ‘It’s lewd language.’ He’s never heard that before?”

Truthfully, I’m having trouble working up sympathy for the Republican Party. They built this. It goes back decades, but the Tea Party was always about blowing everything up – and the GOP embraced that plan.  Trump isn’t an aberration. He’s the natural conclusion. Dr. Frankenstein, meet your monster.

Watching Sunday night’s debate, I kept seeing Trump standing there in a wife-beater tee, clutching a can of beer as he stalked Hillary Clinton around the stage. It was disconcerting, and I grew increasingly nervous watching him. It felt familiar. I know this person. I recognize this behavior.

Trump is an abuser. He checks off every box. As Emily Crockett, Vox, writes: “Trump has spent his entire campaign gaslighting America by denying that he ever said or did things that we have clear video or text evidence that he did, in fact, say or do.” You know, as in trying to tell us that Hillary started the birther movement.

(Gaslighting is classic abusive behavior. It’s a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting his or her own memory, perception, and sanity. [Wiki definition])

She cites Trump’s interview with Megyn Kelly (go read the whole thing!).

Then Kelly pressed Trump further on bullying. She asked him how American parents are supposed to “raise their kids to not bully, to not name-call, to not tease, not taunt … when the frontrunner for the Republican nomination does all of those things?”

Trump’s response chilled me to the bone: “You know, I’ve been saying during this whole campaign that I’m a counterpuncher, you understand that. I’m responding. … I mean, I respond pretty strongly. But in just about all cases, I’ve been responding to what they did to me. So it’s not a one-way street.”

“I’ve been responding to what they did to me,” Trump said when asked about his bullying tactics.

Trump was gaslighting — scrupulously denying responsibility, and even denying objective reality, enough to make you question your own grip on reality: I never said that. I never did that. It’s your fault. I’m the victim here.

You. Made. Me. Hit. You.

 

 

 

 

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A stay-at-home mom with an obsession for National politics.

Comments (6)

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  1. Jason330 says:

    Paul Ryan could be the hero. If he had a vestigial trace of a backbone, he could do what Mike Castle should have done to the Tea Party ten years ago. He could say,

    “This guy is a menace. The emperor has no clothes. He is a fraud of a businessman, and a terrible human who has no idea what is going on in the world. Our Party made a huge mistake nominating him and when he loses this election it will be nobody’s fault but his. And yet, for the rest of our lives, we should carry the shame of having nominated someone so illequiped and ill suited to be President. “

    Of course, Ryan has no backbone. He will not be the hero because he is the product of the same polluted ecosystem that produced Trump. Suck it Ryan, you miserable peice of shit.

  2. puck says:

    Trump is running on the Republican agenda, somewhat bastardized but still recognizable. I wish Trump could be defeated because America finally rejects the disastrous Republican agenda But if the image of Trump in a wife-beater T-shirt keeps that agenda at bay for one more cycle, I’ll take it.

  3. Delaware Dem says:

    Great minds. I included an excerpt of this Marshall piece in the Open Thread.

  4. pandora says:

    Trump avoids policy discussions like the plague. That’s why the Republican agenda is somewhat buried.

    Some of the most stunning exchanges during Sunday night’s debate were between Trump and the moderators who tried to get him to explain his policies. Well, that and every word he uttered about foreign policy.

    I always knew Trump would have difficulties running against a woman (given his clearly stated opinions on women), but I never dreamed how easily he’d implode. Hats off to Hillary for not getting into a yelling match and keeping her focus. It’s been quite remarkable to watch.

  5. pandora says:

    Great minds, indeed!

  6. Truth Teller says:

    When are the DEM’s going to remind the steel workers in PA. and OHIO that Trump builds his buildings using steel made in China along with his ties shirts and suits made outside the USA