SUMMARY: Gaslighting is a term that is used pretty often in our political discourse. We hear it on a daily basis used by everyone from Jake Tapper to Karoline Leavitt. But it is much more serious than our casual use of it makes it sound. Here’s the definition, explanation, and annotated example that you need to understand this all-too-real phenomenon. We use ABCNews’ Terry Moran’s interview with Trump on 1 May about Kilmar Ábrego García’s tattoos as our example. You won’t want to miss it.
KEY WORDS: Kilmar Ábrego García MS-13 Photoshop Terry Moran ABC News Gaslighting El Salvador Knuckles Lies Manipulation Threats Emotional Abuse
COMMENT: What do you think of the interview? Did you think it was gaslighting? How does it compare to other instances of gaslighting you
Since The TACO Stain has been on the political scene, gaslighting is a term we’ve become all too familiar with. It gets used far too frequently to describe claims that we disagree with or doubt or we need some handy clickbait in our endless search for likes, shares, and comments. After all, the most controversial posts and memes are the ones that are most likely to go viral. Always be influencing is the lefts answer to always be grifting, amirite?
Here at Ye Olde Blogge where we’ve never chased a click, like, or share in the history of site, we like to shine a little light of information and reasonableness onto our political debate in the hopes that a better understanding will produce a more agreeable result. So, come on everybody, let’s explore gaslighting!
Gaslighting 101
Gaslighting, according to the Cleveland Clinic, is a specific form of emotional abuse and mental manipulation that disrupts your ability to trust others and yourself. It is more than just a lie. Everyone lies nearly every day. It’s more than just denial of responsibility or hiding your motivations.
It has two components. First, it is constant and systematic. The gaslighter has to attack the gaslightee’s perceptions and understanding of the world. They do this not only through lying about things that happened or are otherwise factual, thus undermining their perceptions of the world around them, but also, by attacking them as a person. Second, it is deeply personal. The gaslighter is causing the gaslightee to doubt themselves as an autonomous human being with agency. The gaslighter’s goal is to make the gaslightee dependent on them for how to interpret the world and what is happening. And third, it is threatening. Whether it is an explicit threat of physical violence or just abandonment, the gaslightee feels deeply worried about their safety.
As in the movie, Gaslight, the goal — whether it is conscious or unconscious — is to undermine the gaslightee’s mental health and sense of self. The gaslighter attacks the very core of their being telling them in big ways and small that they have no worth as a human being, they have no skills, they have no capabilities, and that without the gaslighter, they are nothing.
It is the one-two punch of lying to the person about things they know are true, coupled with the relentless attacks on their self-esteem that distinguish gaslighting from our everyday lies, guilt trips, and shaming. And, then the ultimate knock-out punch of if-you-don’t-go-along-I’m-going-to-kill-you that is the undoing of the gaslightee.
Throughout the reign of the Ol’ Pussy Grabber, we laughed and thought ourselves clever by pointing out all the ways he was gaslighting his MAGA stooges and the access-dependent press. Looking back on it, we were really just cosplaying Viva la Resistance! by posting really good memes and pwning MAGA and going on protest marches. At least, until the 6 January Insurrection happened and #COVID19 showed up and the Ol’ Pussy Grabber killed over a million of us.
Trump Puts On A Masterclass In Gaslighting
When I saw this clip from an interview from ABC News with Terry Moran, I thought it was the perfect example of gaslighting. You really do have to watch it, buffering or no. I’ve listed the transcript with commentary in blue interspersed in the dialogue.
The TACO Stain’s Gaslighting Transcript
TACO Stain: …wasn’t a member of a gang. And, then they looked and on his knuckles he had MS-13.
Moran: There’s dispute over that.
TACO Stain: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. He had MS-13 on his knuckles — tattooed.
This is the beginning. TACO Stain is like a dog licking his own boner. He just isn’t going to let that thing go.
Moran: He had some tattoos that were interpreted that way. [Cuts to still of TACO Stain showing the photoshopped picture of a fist with tattoos and the letters MS and numbers 13 written on it. Surprised it wasn’t in Sharpie.] But, let’s move on.
TACO Stain: Wait a minute. Hey, Terry, Terry, Terry. Don’t do that.
Moran: He didn’t have the letter M S 1 3
TACO Stain: It says M S 1 3
Moran: That was Photoshop. So, let me…
TACO Stain: That was Photoshop? Terry you can’t do that. Hey, they’re giving you the big break of a lifetime, you know you’re doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you but that’s okay. I picked you, Terry. But, you’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed.
Once it’s clear that Moran isn’t going to roll over and accept his lie, TACO Stain has to make it personal. He has to attack him, imply he’s a no body. TACO Stain has done him a hoooge favor, and, like a date that you’ve paid for a movie and dinner for, now has to reciprocate by putting out. Otherwise, you’re not a nice girl.
Moran: We’ll agree to disagree. I want to move on to something else.
TACO Stain: Terry. Do you want me to show you the picture?
Moran: I saw the picture.
TACO Stain: And you think it was Photoshop? Well…
Moran: Here we go…
Clearly, Moran was prepared for this eventuality… and so was TACO Stain.
TACO Stain: don’t Photoshop it. Go look at his hand. He had MS-13
Moran: He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I’m not an expert on them. I want to turn to Ukraine.
TACO Stain: No, no, Terry. Terry, Terry, no, no.
Moran: I want to get to Ukraine.
TACO Stain: No, no. He had M S as clear as you can be, not interpreted. This is why people no longer believe…
You could hear the anger in the breaking of the hard crispy TACO Stain shell. It was verging on malice.
Moran: Well… [Sounding exasperated]
TACO Stain: …the news because it’s fake…
Moran: When he was photographed in El Salvador, they aren’t there. But, let’s go on.
TACO Stain: He is
Moran: They aren’t there when he’s in El Salvador.
TACO Stain: Oh, oh, they weren’t there, but they’re there now, right?
The cheap shot at agreement. To quote Admiral Ackbar, It’s a trap! and many people will fall into it.
Moran: Take a look at the photograph. [Talking over each other] No!
TACO Stain: They’re there now. Terry.
The dogged insistence on the lie being accepted as true. It’s there to wear you down.
Moran: Ukraine, sir. [Sounding weary]
TACO Stain: He’s got MS-13 on his knuckles.
Moran: All right.
TACO Stain: Okay?
TACO Stain is hopeful that he’s on the verge of agreeing.
Moran: We’ll take a look…
TACO Stain: You do such a disservice.
But, Moran doesn’t, so we’re back to the personal attack.
Moran: We’ll take a look at that, sir.
TACO Stain: Why don’t you just say, “Yes, he does”? and you know, go on to something else?
This is the money shot right here. This is gaslighter gold. If he can get his victim to agree, he’s started the erosion that will eventually lead to the avalanche.
Moran: It’s contested.
Moran does a good job of standing up to him, and while he doesn’t cave, he could say, No sir, there is no tattoo there, sounding like Picard in that torture episode of Star Trek: Next Generation.
How much do you want to bet that Kilmar Abrego Garcia now has MS-13 tattooed to his knuckles?
Gaslighting: Controlling the Truth
The key to gaslighting someone successfully is getting them to agree with the lie that first time. Make it easier for them to just give up and agree so you can go on and talk about Ukraine, and the next time with the next lie, it’ll be just that much easier to get them to agree.
The suit against CBS News and 60 Minutes puts the teeth in the threat. And, it is what makes it so disappointing that they offered to settle, and telling that the TACO Stain turned them down. It is what makes it so important that Harvard doesn’t settle.
MAGA, the legacy news agencies, and most corporations have all willingly been gaslit because they see advantage in it for themselves. MAGA gets to be as racist and misogynistic as they wanna be. The legacy news outlets and corporations are happy to spout any lie and threat that the TACO Stain spouts so long as they remain profitable.
Image Attribution
This image was found on WikiMedia Commons page Chris Van Hollen and Kilmar Ábrego García using a DuckDuck Go Creative Commons License search
The Psy of Life 
I keep going back to the part of this event when TACO clearly expected, as he always does that the other person has to be so grateful for his attention that they will go along with any crap he drops on them, and if they resist, his need to get them to agree by wearing them down or intimidation. He is unable to let it go, or even to move on and come back to it.
And now, we have the news that Mr. Garcia is back from El Salvador to face Trumped ( pun intended) up charges. The gaslight continues, now, in Federal court.
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Howdy Bob!
I’m going to be surprised if Garcia doesn’t have MS-13 tats on his knuckles and elsewhere. I’m also not going to be surprised if they have fabricated evidence against him. I’ll be really surprised, though, if the case doesn’t just completely fall apart and the judge chastises the gov’t lawyers for their incompetence… AGAIN.
I thought that the interview really did show the stages of Trump’s — I think TACO Stain is a terrific derogatory nickname for him — gaslighting. He really thinks that everyone should just accept him at his word and when you don’t, it follows a predictable pattern: differential of power (I picked you), derision (because I didn’t know you), anger (the very real anger in his voice), and then threat (if you want to move on, why don’t you just say it).
It also shows Trump’s incredible weakness. All you have to do is say no to him and stand up to his pressure. Of course, he’s got a lot of pressure he can bring to bear, just ask Harvard and Columbia. But, he’s also vulnerable to pressure, right Maine? It just reinforces, again, how unbelievable it is that he wormed his way into office ever much less a second time.
Huzzah!
Jack
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In many ways, in fact, constantly, what comes through to the trained eye and ear is the neediness, and the fear of abandonment that drive so much of this man’s behavior. His rage and vindictive lashing out when anyone on whom he has depended, even when thinking he is getting over on them, is only saved from the suicidal panic of BPD by his Machiavellian instincts.
You might enjoy chewing on this study: https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/general/narcissistic-leadership-in-hitler-putin-and-trump-shares-common-roots-new-psychology-paper-claims/ar-AA1FXCxe
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Howdy Bob!
It’s an interesting article, but I think it is working too hard to find similarities between Hitler’s and Putin’s upbringing and Trump’s. And, they seem to have missed some important factors. Interestingly, both Hitler and Putin were “replacement” children, meaning children whose older siblings had passed, making them the target of doting overprotective mothers. How did the author miss that Trump is at least a figurative replacement child when his older brother Fred rejected the family business and the overbearing father to become a pilot? How did the author miss the reason Trump was sent to military boarding school was his out-of-control aggressive behavior, causing his mother to remark that they had raised a monster?
I don’t know about Hitler and Putin, but Trump had clear troubling pathological anti-social traits starting at a very young age. And, like many psychopaths, his social milieu didn’t “cure” him, it just taught him how to mask his psychopathic tendencies in more socially acceptable ways.
If anything, Trump is the example that demonstrates the inheritability of narcissistic and psychopathic traits. His father and paternal grandfather were both pretty clear narcissists and psychopaths themselves. Fred rejected it all and drank — my supposition — to self-medicate the pain of suppressing his anti-social side and removal from the family. His sister, the judge, had a more limited self-serving anti-social side, but had to resign under cloud of scandal from participating in their familial tax evasion schemes.
Anywho, it is an interesting area of study, and all three are clear warnings of what happens when you let malignant narcissists take political power.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I can think of several other candidates for similar study, although getting the details on some, like Kim Jong-un and his father and grandfather would be difficult. Benjamin Netanyahu is another possible subject, although multi-generational trauma is a major factor with him.
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