The Projection Election
“Look over there! (Not at what I’m doing over here.)”
When someone accuses another person of something that they themselves are guilty of, psychologists refer to it as “Projection.” The behavior, particularly prevalent among people with narcissistic personality disorders, is recognizable to anyone who has or has been around children. The kid who asserts someone is stealing from him, is usually the thief. The kid who says everyone is cheating, is probably cheating on the test. Most people outgrow this immature and transparent behavior. Some don’t.
With one week until the election, as President Trump puts forth his case for re-election with the American people, his list of closing arguments against Joe Biden reads like a Sigmund Freud checklist of Donald Trump’s own crimes. In the absence of accomplishing any of his 2016 campaign promises — building a wall, not done; repealing the ACA, not done; making America great again, definitely not done — Trump is left with nothing but the "lock-her-up” style concocted personal attacks that stirred up the right so effectively in his first election — Benghazi, secret email servers, Pizzagate, that sort of stuff.
So here is Trump, back to play the 2020 version of his greatest hits. But after four years of revelations about Trump’s own behavior, the rile-up-the-crowd one-liners ring hollow for all except his most blindly ardent supporters. The hypocrisy of Trump’s Projection is comical. Trump wants you vote for him (or, more accurately, not vote for Joe Biden), based on the following arguments:
Hunter Biden is corrupt — Based on his incessant mentions of Hunter Biden, Trump seems to believe this is his top argument for re-election. Burisma is his Benghazi of 2020. Setting aside the fact that even a partisan Republican-led Senate investigation of the Bidens found no wrong-doing, and that the entire smear effort originated with a Russian disinformation campaign that got the President impeached, Trump accusing Hunter Biden of inappropriately benefitting from his father’s position is the ultimate Projection. Donald Trump’s multi-generational nepotism is unrivaled. What better way to distract voters from the innumerable ways Trump’s own children have directly profited from his presidency than to accuse his opponent’s son of a similar impropriety. While Biden has acknowledged his son’s mistakes, this is classic Projection by Trump.
The Bidens are taking Chinese bribes — Tonight, I spent an hour of my life I’ll never get back watching Tucker Carlson interview Tony Bobulinski who “exposed” Joe Biden’s “connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” The fact that the only media outlets to “report” this story besides Fox has been the New York Post, Breitbart and the Washington Times, is either confirmation of its illegitimacy or of the “liberal media bias,” depending on your politics. But listening to the alleged accusation is so incoherent that even the Wall Street Journal found the claims dubious. Meanwhile, back in reality, Trump is trying to distract from recent reporting about his own secret Chinese company, THC China Development, that inexplicably had a windfall spike in revenue of $17.5 million immediately after Trump’s election, more than the previous five years’ combined, of which Trump personally pocketed $15.1 million, or the millions more Trump has made in real estate deals while in office that likely violate the Emoluments Clause. Again, classic Projection behavior to make unproven accusations of Biden that mirror exactly what Trump has, in fact, himself done.
The Justice Department must investigate Joe Biden — At this point in Trump’s presidency, the only thing preventing him from going to prison is William Barr. Despite repeated contortions of the law to protect his boss, Barr now stands accused by Trump of failing to initiate a criminal investigatIon of Joe Biden. For what alleged crime, it’s not even clear. Nor does it matter for Trump. He just needs an investigation to deflect from the dozens of federal investigations pending on himself. Even for Barr, this is a bridge too far. Perhaps Trump’s greatest fear, and therefore greatest Projection, is the full weight of the Justice Department finally being unleashed against him.
Mail-in ballots are election fraud — Knowing that mail-in ballots are likely to lean heavily Democratic, Trump has been poisoning the well and laying the groundwork to reject the election based on the claim all mail-in ballots are fraudulent. While there is virtually no factual basis for this claim, the California Republican Party perpetrated actual and admitted fraud by setting up unauthorized ballot boxes in the state. Once again, Trump is Projecting with an imaginary claim to distract from an actual crime.
Violent mobs are coming to get you — Trump has repeatedly seized on the boogeymen of Antifa and Black Lives Matter to portray a threat to suburban white voters. While there is no excuse for the isolated incidents of vandalism and looting that arose from largely peaceful protests over the least several months, in reality, the Department of Homeland Security has identified right-wing groups as the greatest domestic terrorism threat — stating in their October 2020 Threat Assessment report they are "particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years." Can you imagine the right-wing media’s outrage if Biden had told Antifa to “stand by” as Trump directed the right-wing group the Proud Boys to do in the midst of a Presidential Debate? More Projecting.
Biden leads a secret underground pedophilia cult — And when all else fails, just embrace the bat-shit crazy QAnon conspiracy theory that Biden is a secret pedophile. I can’t help anyone who believes such ridiculous nonsense. And, yet, here again we see Trump Projecting — attempting to legitimize outlandish claims about his opponent, when he himself has a well-documented and, frankly, sickening history of groping 14-year-old beauty pageant contestants and fraternizing with Jeffrey Epstein.
Even Trump’s ageist attack against Biden, calling him "Grandpa Joe” or “Sleepy Joe” (nothing sticking quite as despicably as “Crooked Hillary” moniker) is Projection — Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden.
The sources of Trump’s claims are deep fakes, conspiracy theory blogs and Russian disinformation campaigns — all of which are incessantly repeated in the right-wing media echo chamber. Any “failure” by the “media mob” to pick up these manufactured, false-equivalency, easily-disproven “stories” is seen as just further proof of the media’s liberal bias. While the majority of us try to maintain a world in which facts matter, the retort by Trump and his followers amounts to a collective “I know you are, but what am I?” Hopefully, we can show him on November 3.