Background: At a recent Las Vegas Trump rally, the candidate launched into an incoherent riff about being in a boat with heavy, required boat batteries causing the boat to sink, while a large shark was ten yards away, how a girl got her leg bitten off, and how he would rather be electrocuted than be eaten by a shark. Mr. Trump also referred to “my relationship to MIT.” He had an uncle who taught at MIT decades ago and died in 1985. Mr. Trump’s shark scenario is available on youtube. The following is the psychological assessment ordered by Judge Juan Merchan prior to sentencing Mr. Trump after his recent trial. The confidential assessment was leaked to a Real Fake News reporter.
Psychotherapist: Mr. Trump, let’s begin by chatting about your interest in sharks.
Trump: Sure, I love sharks, but they’re scary. I mean, have you ever seen a great white shark? They can swallow you whole. But then when they do, your body starts to give off an acid that makes the shark need to vomit, so if you’re lucky, and if he hasn’t bitten you in two, you might get vomited back up and go on with your life. The other thing is, if you’re in a boat with a big battery—Joe Biden made that a new law—the boat will sink because the Biden battery makes it so heavy. And then the shark comes over, and you can take the cables and, if the shark swallows you, you can electrocute him. You know my uncle worked at MIT and so that’s how I know these things. Electrocute the bastard, Okay?
Psychotherapist: So you’ve spent a good bit of time thinking about this.
Trump: Absolutely. When I was president, we spent a lot of time in Cabinet meetings talking about sharks and the danger they posed to our country. My generals sometimes wanted to talk about Russia or China but I always had to bring them back to the real threats facing us. And now Joe Biden is making the shark threat worse with his boat batteries. It’s a disgrace. I think those boat batteries are attracting them. It’s like radar waves in the water, you know? The radar waves get tangled up in the ocean waves and the sharks come and attack. And the batteries are so heavy. It took four of my army guys to lift one. Boats sinking everywhere. Grizzly bears are bad too. But if you’ve got the boat battery, and the grizzly comes in the water…those bears…. Now what I’d like to see is a grizzly bear fight a great white shark. The one that would win would be the one who could use the battery. But he bit off the girl’s leg, so she couldn’t get to the battery.
Psychotherapist: So as a personal matter, you are very concerned about sharks and grizzlies, more so than threats from non-democratic states?
Trump: Who wouldn’t be? Putin told me one time—he never interfered in our elections, you know—that he got in a fight with a grizzly one time. The grizzly raised his front leg and took a swipe at him, but Vlad used his judo and threw the bear on the ground, and then he used a sleeper hold on him, the bear went to sleep, and Putin just walked away.
Psychotherapist: Let’s move on from threats in the natural world to your views on international, political threats. Are you concerned that….
Trump: That’s a good point, and I agree with you. In China, they have panda bears, and Joe Biden keeps trying to bring them here. They’re like an invasive species, by the way, and soon we’ll be fighting them everywhere if Biden gets elected. He says all they do is eat coconut sticks, but with my MIT background I know better. They can rip off your leg just like a great white shark, believe me. And with their paws, which are huge, they can turn on those batteries and electrocute you. Hey, bears have paws and sharks have jaws. Pretty good, huh? But the Chinese have figured out how to use those batteries to deal with their panda problem. So yeah, that’s a good point you’re making.
Psychotherapist: Actually, I wasn’t trying to make a point. I was asking about your views on political threats. But we can move on. How do you feel about these criminal charges against you?
Trump: Well, they’re all rigged, you know. It’s like the sharks. Those prosecutors are swimming around looking for innocent victims. They’ll try to swallow you, but you just use the battery and zap—they’re gone. And that Judge Merchan is totally corrupt, just like the sharks. And the jurors ought to be shot. Hey look, it’s been great talking to you, and I like all that you know about sharks. Biden doesn’t know anything about sharks. Maybe you could be the Defense Secretary in my next administration. But right now I gotta go meet with my probation officer, so gotta run.
Psychotherapist’s official report: “Case File 1302, New York District Court, Interviewee, Donald J. Trump. Interview date June 13, 2024. Submitted to Judge Juan Merchan, re conviction of Interviewee on charges of falsification of business records in the first degree related to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels for purpose of election fraud. Clinical diagnosis: Interviewee is one fucked-up dude.”
John Rachal's Blog 
Through the Looking Glass
June 24, 2024 at 12:59 pm (Political Commentary)
I have been slack-jaw perplexed by all the claims of the far right about what a corrupt, indeed evil genius and manipulator of the New World Order Joe Biden is. Where are they getting all this unbounded, scratch-your-head buncombe? Where is a scintilla of evidence that Biden has used the judicial system to persecute poor victim Donald Trump? Where is a particle of truth to Biden’s interfering to minimize son Hunter’s judicial woes? Where are all those dollars Joe has made steering foreign diplomats to stay in his hotels? Where are all the dollars extracted from the students at Biden University? Where are all the Biden Brownshirts marching in the streets of Charlottesville? Which judge was it who ruled that the Biden Foundation was guilty of fraud?
I really haven’t been keeping up with all of Joe’s corruption, so maybe you folks in MAGA World could help me with a few more. What was the name of that porn star Joe paid hush money to in order to hide their rendezvous from the public? Which general did Biden ask if he could have the army shoot protesters in the legs? Sorry, I can’t remember, was it a four-star or a three? Which state Secretary of State was it that “gimme a break” Biden called to demand that he find 11,000 more Biden votes? Darn it, my memory is getting so bad, which European president was it that Joe pressured to call for an investigation of Trump and his sons? When was it that Joe told his now-deceased Iraq veteran son Beau Biden that he was a sucker and a loser for his military service? Which rally was it that Biden told his cult that if they didn’t fight like hell they wouldn’t have a country anymore? And—sorry, I must have been dozing—what were those dates that he publicly denied doing all these things?
So anyway, in my galactic-wide naivete, I’ve been wondering about the origins of all the claims of corruption and general depravity spewing from the Biden crime family, and in particular why those claims are so persistent. And finally, finally, the 40 watt light bulb switched on. You do that when your guy (I use masculine nouns and pronouns because I am really talking about Trump and Biden) is himself guilty of those very things. You do it to establish immoral equivalence, or, perhaps better phrased, amoral equivalence. If you are wallowing in the sewer, or if your candidate is, you have to try to convince the electorate that No, you are not covered in feces, despite it covering you from head to toe, but the enemy—not merely your “opponent”—is.
Let’s call it guilt transposition—you transpose your actual guilt to create, ex nihilo, the invented guilt of the other guy. Knowing the amoral or immoral depths of your own candidate, you can hardly sit idly by and allow your enemy to stand on the moral high ground, however legitimately he does so, even if merely by comparison. You have to knock him off that high ground, you have to fake slime him with your own real slime. You’re actually incompetent? No, the other guy is. You’re actually corrupt? No, the other guy is. You as candidate, or you as supporter of that candidate, have long since established that any moral or ethical concern about you or your candidate’s behavior is a preposterous consideration, positively laughable. Honor, shmonor. Hence GOP “investigations” of Biden; hence rumblings of impeachment inquiries, at least until your prime witness turns out to be an established liar; hence a subpoena for Hunter Biden to testify before a congressional kangaroo hearing; hence Biden crime family; hence Biden is “the worst president in history.”* You create a looking glass wonderland, where bad is good, up is down, black is white, false is true—and you repeat it again and again, hoping the electorate is gullible enough to buy it.
*Said by Trump about Biden. A 2024 poll of presidential scholars by the American Political Science Association ranked Biden 14th among our 46 presidents–impressive, I thought, for a one-termer. I looked to see who all the one-term-or-less presidents were and where they ranked in the APSA list. Of those 23 one-termers, Biden was number three, behind John Adams and John Kennedy. Of all presidents, Trump ranks dead last.
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