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Background Briefing: December 1, 2020
Breaking the Ties That Bind Trump’s Base to His Delusions
We begin with an increasingly delusional president fighting a losing battle to overturn an election he lost, although because Trump is so clearly mentally ill, he will probably never believe he lost since that would require facing reality. Joining us is Lance Dodes, a Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus with The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute who was a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is a contributor along with 36 other psychiatrists and mental health experts to the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. We discuss Trump’s condition of narcissistic mortification as reality intrudes on the fantasy of the winner he sees himself as, when in the real world, he has always been a fake, a fraud and a conman. Ironically what caught up with him was that he did not want the job he ran for. It was another con just to boost the Trump brand but he got stuck having to fake the most difficult job in the world which has resulted in the worst and most disastrous presidency in our nation’s history. But since Trump is actively sabotaging his successor’s presidency and America’s ability to function, we still have about 40% of
the country which has yet to figure out how much they have been conned. We examine the possibility of some kind of non-partisan public accounting taking place to break the spell that binds Trump’s base to his delusions so that the country can heal and face the daunting challenges ahead.
Why Trump’s Followers Believe His Lies and How to Break His Cult-like Spell
Then instead of accepting his loss, as Trump actively divides the country and undermines Biden’s ability to govern, we get an analysis of why people are persuaded to believe the most outrageous lies and deny the evidence of death and destruction piling up around them as they remain blindly devoted to a leader who clearly only cares about himself in what are clearly the characteristics of a cult leader and cult followers. Steven Hassan, a mental health professional who helps people recover from mind control and exit cults without coercion, joins us to discuss his latest book The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. Having been rescued by his parents from the infamous cult, the Moonies, Steven now directs the Freedom of Mind Resource Center and we discuss what it will take to break the spell of a presidency which in many ways is like a destructive cult and free Trump’s followers so they begin to work with instead of fighting against their fellow Americans and start fighting the Covid virus.
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