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.