The Debate Exposed How Easy It Is to Use Trump’s Narcissism to Manipulate Him

1. Trump the Extreme Narcissist
   1. The Role of Narcissistic Wounds in Being a Narcissist
2. Crowd Sizes: How to Manipulate a Narcissist
   1. Inauguration Crowd Gaslighting
   2. Explosive Argument: Springfield Cats & Dogs
3. The Debate Performance as Narcissistic Collapse
4. Image Attribution

Much has been made of how easily Harris baited Trump, and how he went for it hook, line, and sinker every damn time. While we don’t yet know if it will sink his candidacy, it tells us a lot about how to manipulate the Felonious Authoritarian Rapist Traitor or Old FART for short.

By now, we’ve all seen the choicer bits of the debate in clips on the late night comedian talk shows or on our social medias, so there’s no real reason to rehash and review the entire debate. Instead, let’s just list four of the baited hooks that Trump went for and explain the reasons they were so effective:

• THE HANDSHAKE: Harris walked right up to him as he cowered behind his podium, stuck her hand out, demanded that he take it, said clearly and forthrightly, “Kamala Harris,” by way of introduction — is anyone else surprised she didn’t say, “Kamala Harris, for the people”? — “let’s have a good debate,” and walked way leaving him like a deer stunned by headlights. And that was as good as it got in the debate for the Old FART. It was all downhill from there.
• HIS CABINET’S DISENDORSEMENT: She pointed out that 99% of his former cabinet members either haven’t endorsed him or made statements against his reelection because he is unfit for office. A simple, clean, clear statement from her that left him sputtering.
• CROWD SIZES: She pointed out the small size of the audiences for his campaign events and how it thins as the drone of his rambling grievance-filled tangential speech goes on and on and on. There is so much to unpack here, we’ll revisit it later in the post.
• LAUGHING AT YOU! She said to his face that world leaders are laughing at him because he is a nattering nabob from nob polishing land.

Each of those “attack” lines was effective because each activated a deep unresolved narcissistic wound he suffered in the past decade or so.

The ease with which Harris pushed him around on the stage demonstrates what she meant when she said, “Putin would eat your lunch!” effectively recalling what must have happened behind closed doors in his meetings with Putin when the Old FART ordered his translators not to reveal anything that happened or reported that he believed the oligarch over our own intelligence services.

In this sense, the political press, punditing class, and average liberal schadenfreudist on your social media feed have missed the point entirely. The closest anyone has come to understanding the disqualifying nature of the Old FART’s performance was a comment on MSNBC, stating that Trump can’t “control his mind”—whatever that means.

To grasp the implications of his behavior, we need to explore three key concepts: the nature of extreme narcissism, the role of narcissistic wounds, and the potential dangers of narcissistic collapse for someone wielding such influence. Understanding these factors will shed light on why Harris’s attack lines could provoke such ridiculous and ludicrous responses from him.

Since these topics are going to be briefly covered, follow the links if you want to know more.

Trump the Extreme Narcissist

The Mayo Clinic defines narcissistic personality disorder as “a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.”

Let’s do a quick checklist:

• INFLATED SELF-IMPORTANCE: Trump’s belief in his own significance is evidenced by his long list of electoral losses after having won a squeaker of an election in 2016. His dominance of the Republican Party reflects his inflated view of his importance.
• ATTENTION SEEKING: His history of pulling outrageous statements from his behind demonstrates his relentless pursuit of attention even at the expense of decorum, truth, and the welfare of the American people.
• NEED FOR ADMIRATION: All of his jactations about being the best or most loved or favoritest demonstrates his need for admiration. All of his “Sir! Sir!” stories underscores his need for validation from others even if it only occurs in his own head.
• CALLOUSNESS: Trump doesn’t care about the feelings or needs of others. In fact, it is the exact opposite. He thrives on hurting people, calling them names, denigrating them, belittling them.
• SENSITIVE TO CRITICISM: His reactions to even minor criticisms—like reportedly throwing ketchup at walls—highlight an inability to cope with negative feedback, leading to retaliatory behavior against perceived slights.

The Old FART passes the narcissist checklist test, again! He is indeed an extreme narcissist.

The Role of Narcissistic Wounds in Being a Narcissist

A narcissistic wound occurs when a narcissist’s thin veneer of perfection is pierced, exposing their inner core of insecurity, self-doubt, and self-loathing, which they desperately need to keep concealed.

Narcissists are walking, talking contradictions. They must maintain a clownishly oversized, hyperinflated ego while simultaneously feeling unworthy of love or respect and believing they cannot do anything right. They believe that if their inner truth were revealed, their lives as they know them would crumble, leading to the loss of their societal status, relationships, and any semblance of control. They are driven to protect this inner core at all costs.

When their mantle of perfection is violated, they react defensively, often trying to ‘destroy’ whatever or whoever caused the wound. These extreme behaviors—explosive arguments, false accusations, and gaslighting—were all on display during the debate, illustrating how deeply his narcissistic wounds affect his behaviors and the way he interacts with others.

Crowd Sizes: How to Manipulate a Narcissist

No where was this predictable reaction to a narcissistic wound was more evident than in the dig at his crowd sizes.

Inauguration Crowd Gaslighting

Way back in 2017 when Trump was inaugurated he had a vanishingly small crowd of people there. When he paraded through the streets on his way to the stage, the stands were empty. One, two, or three people were sitting by themselves along the route. The First and Second families walked, smiled, and waved as if the stands were packed, but they were waving at no body.

Trump may have directed the Park Service to produce pictures that made his crowd sizes look as big as or bigger than Obama’s, but that didn’t dim the sting of the narcissistic wound of all of the empty seats. He may have directed Sean Spicer to say forcefully, “That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period,” but that doesn’t make it so, and it doesn’t salve the butt hurt.

Here it is nearly eight years later, and he’s still whining to whoever will be sycophant-enough to listen to him that he has the biggest crowds and the best rallies. It is such a deep injury that he’s still trying to gaslight us over it.

Explosive Argument: Springfield Cats & Dogs

He is so injured by his lack of crowd sizes compared to Obama’s inauguration (or anybody’s really) and Harris’ rallies that he went straight to the The dirty diseased foreign Haitian peoples are eating Homer Simpson’s pet dog!

Luckily, either through being thoroughly prepared, reading Ye Olde Blogge, or knowing how to handle such ridiculous arguments, Harris just openly laughed at him. That is the only response to have to such a ludicrous claim.

However, preposterous his stupid they’re eating the pets line is, it still counts as an explosive argument. After all, we’re still talking about, meming it, and tik toking it here a week — was it a week ago? five days? whatever — later.

The Debate Performance as Narcissistic Collapse

Everything the Old FART whines about is a severe narcissistic wound. The worst wounds he’s received over his life are Obama laughing at his fat lily-white hairless flabby ass at the WHCD, the humiliatingly small crowd at his inauguration (and you know what they say about men with small crowd sizes), and losing to Biden in 2020.

When he was in office, he lived in terror of all of the other world leaders finding out what a dumbass he is that’s why he wouldn’t talk to any of them at conferences and preferred the pretty purrs of Putin in their private meetings.

The pouting, slouching, grimacing, scowling, downcast Trump of the debate is the narcissistic collapse Trump. He looks and acts depressed because he is. That’s his narcissistic collapse reaction, not outrage and violence.

He can rile other people up and stoke violence. He can convince other people to cheat and steal the election for him. He can get other people to default on the debt of the US (maybe, hope not). But, all he can do is whine and whinge and relitigate his hit parade of grievances of wrongs past.

Now, I’m sick and tired of writing about the Old FART’s narcissism. As Harris says, it is time to turn the page. We’re moving on to other topics in future posts.

Image Attribution

This image was found on the WikiSimpsons using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons image search.