Donald Trump, Abuser-in-Chief

Ever since Trump came down that damn escalator what feels like a lifetime ago, I have understood everything he has done through the lens of domestic violence.

To be blunt, Trump is an abuser who uses hurt and fear to exert power and control. The parallels to the behavior of an abusive behavior cascade from there.

He causes harm and then blames everyone else for his abuse. He says “I am the only one for you” and then he throws you away when you no longer serve his purposes. He is the ultimate gaslighter, where truth means nothing.

He rewrites history and has no allegiance to consistency. The narrative is always one that suits his purposes in that moment, even if it contradicts what he said just moments ago.

He sees others not as individuals with feelings and needs, but as extensions of his own needs. You are “good” if you are meeting those needs and validating his worldview, and disloyal if you are not. Disloyalty is met with punishment, often severe. His pick for vice president, J.D. Vance, might do well to remember that he encouraged the hanging of the former occupant of that job when that occupant dared to not do his bidding. It’s also not lost on me that Vance once said that women should stay in abusive relationships, making Vance a perfect compliment to Trump’s worldview and history of violence against women.

Like so many batterers, Trump becomes more dangerous when he feels he is losing control. A loss of control is met with a backlash and an increase in violence. And that is scary.

As a part of his abuse he enlists allies who not just back up his world view but also punish those who cross his. So his power increases as he builds support amongst those who want to be in close proximity to his power. The people who flock to him think they will be safe as long as they remain in his favor. But they are not really safe - I reference his former vice president again.

I say all this because I do think we have all been impacted by this in some way. We are an entire nation dealing with some sort of trauma response, which has only been compounded by the impact of the pandemic.

We have been gaslit, abused, or ignored when we sounded the alarm about his abuse. We have been told that our truth doesn’t matter because no truth matters. We have suffered and then been told that our suffering is our own damn fault.

Recently I saw someone posit that the media - and we Americans - feed into this cycle of abuse because we have become addicted to it. I’m uncomfortable with that analysis as it’s a little too heavy on the victim blaming. But I do think that enough of this abuse eventually makes it familiar. It gets to the point where we can’t imagine life without the abusive behavior. Nor can we really remember what life was like before Trump’s abuse started.

So yeah. Lots and lots of trauma responses pinging around this country. And it would be great if our public discourse could name that, and acknowledge that we are all really worried about what’s to come. And we are all being super reactive about it.

But our public discourse meets that reactivity with more reactivity, playing in to all our fears and conflict. I’m not super optimistic about changing that, but maybe if enough of us point it out we can start moving the needle a tiny bit.

We are a traumatized nation and a nation of trauma survivors, with some communities that have experienced heaps and heaps of trauma. We have a real and scary potential of having to go back to the abuser-in-chief because we can’t figure out how to safely get out of the relationship.

We are a nation that needs more healers and more healing discourse. And if someone can figure out how to start eliciting that healing, sign me up for it. I am all in.

*An addendum - I wrote this post before the shooting at Trump’s campaign rally this past weekend. I have changed almost nothing since except for noting his VP pick. But I do want to make clear that while I absolutely condemn Trump’s violent words and actions, and feel very strongly that he inspires violence in others, I absolutely do not condone the violence that was directed at him. We can (and should) call out all of the ways he injects more violence into the world, understand the role he and the gun lobby play in the epidemic of gun violence in America, but still decry the shooting this weekend. From our street corners to our political events, no one should live in fear of being shot. A sentiment I very much wish Trump would adopt.