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United States President Donald Trump watches as he leaves a rally at the Toledo Express Airport in Swanton, Ohio.
MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images
- With his defeat in the US presidential election, Donald Trump finds himself struggling against being labeled with a “loser” label.
- The Republican is taking legal action in several battle states, though his attorneys have so far been unable to substantiate the fraud allegations.
- Observers view the possibility of the courts overturning the result of the vote as extremely small.
With his defeat in the US presidential election, Donald Trump finds himself struggling to be labeled with a label that he frequently applies to his rivals but goes completely against his own brand: “loser.”
The Republican is taking legal action in several battle states, although his attorneys have so far been unable to substantiate the fraud allegations and observers view the possibility of the courts overturning the result of the vote as extremely small.
Yet according to academics and mental health professionals, the same authoritarian qualities that defined Trump’s rise to power and his presidency make it nearly impossible for him to digest an elegant concession to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden.
This, they warn, could make the post-election period, leading up to the inauguration, a particularly unstable time for the country.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, told AFP that Trump had tried to establish an “authoritarian model of the presidency” based on “arrogance, brutality and the idea that he must be defended from his enemies”.
“It is easier to claim that the entire election was a fraud than to admit that his policies turned his people against him in sufficient numbers to ensure his defeat,” added the author of the next book: “Strong Men: Mussolini to the Present.”
Having claimed victimization at the hands of ignoble forces that rallied against him, “we can hope that he will continue in this line and delay the public humiliation of a concession speech,” he said.
She argued:
We must be attentive to what he might do in the coming months with a vengeful spirit.
That conclusion was shared by John Gartner, a Baltimore-based psychologist who is among a growing number of mental health professionals who have publicly warned that Trump is a “malignant narcissist.”
People with this personality type, first coined by the famous psychoanalyst Erich Fromm to explain “the quintessence of evil,” exhibit narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, paranoia, and sadism.
Gartner said it was concerned that Trump might attempt to apply a “Nero decree” or a “Scorched Earth” strategy as a means of dealing with his loss.
But he added that he was hopeful that given the painful loss, the president would begin to lose control over some of his supporters.
For Mary Trump, the president’s niece and one of his most strident critics, her uncle’s decision to declare himself the winner of the election and accuse his rival of cheating spoke of his despair over circumstances he was not used to.
“Donald has never been to this place before where there is no one to rescue him, there is no one to buy him,” the clinical psychologist, who wrote a memoir about her uncle over the summer, told MSNBC.
In his book, he argued that the president is a product of his “sociopathic” father Fred Trump, who created an abusive and traumatic home life.
Trump has built his public image on the idea of being a winner, first in New York’s tough real estate world and then on “The Apprentice,” where he presented the mythology of his business acumen, despite his numerous bankruptcies. corporate.
He has also sought to contrast his record as the head of a large company with the life choices of his rivals. In 2015, he dubbed the late Senator John McCain a “loser” and said of the Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war, “I like people who weren’t captured.
Just weeks before the election, meanwhile, Trump told supporters in Georgia that Biden was the “worst candidate in the history of presidential politics.”
“Can you imagine if I lose?” he pondered, before adding, “Maybe I’ll have to leave the country?”
Lawrence Douglas, author of “Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020,” argued that there are prudential reasons why staying in high office is beneficial.
In addition to being in debt hundreds of millions of dollars, he faces defamation cases from women who have accused him of sexual misconduct and even possible criminal charges stemming from his business practices, and his immunity ends when he is no longer president.
But beyond that, Trump’s refusal to budge helps keep his connection to his base alive, Douglas said. “In defeat, his brand will remain irresistible to his fans.”
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