The Fake & Fraudulent Prophets Around the President
September 4, 2026 |
Daniel Henderson
Politics today feels more like an emotional rollercoaster than a civic debate. Each day brings a new insult, a new enemy, or a new claim that defies reality. People find themselves exhausted by the constant churn of outrage, unsure whether to keep paying attention or to look away for the sake of their own sanity.
This isn’t just simple partisanship. I can assure you it is not. There is something deeper and darker at work.
The public behavior of Donald Trump mirrors patterns psychologists associate with abusive personalities: humiliation, domination, the manipulation of reality, and the strategic use of chaos. This doesn’t require a clinical diagnosis. He has been doing this to the people around him his whole life.
Now, as President, those abusive dynamics have moved from private relationships into national leadership, and the same abusive characteristics are inflicted upon all of us. The psychological consequences no longer remain confined to his household or his business associates. They ripple outward across an entire society.
Simply put…Donald Trump abuses the American people daily!
If you are experiencing stress, disorientation, fear, confusion, and sorrow related to our political condition, you are not imagining it. Trump has inflicted the same abusive techniques on all of us because that is what he always does. In everyday life, the emotional strain shows up in small but telling ways.
Psychologists sometimes describe this state as emotional hypervigilance, a trauma-driven, chronic state of being on guard for emotional threats, causing individuals to constantly scan for negative cues, anticipate conflict, and prioritize others’ feelings to maintain safety. It is an exhausting condition in which people constantly brace themselves for the next conflict.
Understand this: Trump has deliberately and intentionally traumatized the American people.
To understand why so many citizens experience politics this way, it helps to examine patterns psychologists have documented for decades in abusive relationships. Abuse is not limited to physical harm. It often includes psychological elements such as humiliation, manipulation, and the systematic destabilization of reality.
These psychological concepts were developed to explain interpersonal dynamics, yet they shed light on what happens when similar behaviors appear in positions of political power, as with Trump.
Humiliation, for example, is a common tool of dominance. The scholar Evelin Lindner has argued that humiliation functions as a social weapon. By belittling others publicly, a dominant figure reinforces hierarchy: one person elevated, another diminished.
Trump’s rhetoric frequently operates in this way. Critics are never addressed through policy disagreement. They are mocked, given derisive nicknames, or portrayed as weak and incompetent. Former allies who fall out of favor often receive the same treatment.
The message extends beyond the immediate target. Public humiliation signals to everyone else what happens to those who step out of line. Never forget the despicable meme Trump published on social media after the No Kings Rally. Flying over the country dumping his feces on citizens was an act of humiliation and domination.
In the workplace, this behavior would likely be considered abusive and bullying and would be reported immediately to HR. In politics, repeated often enough, it becomes part of a governing style.
Another familiar dynamic in abusive relationships is the manipulation of reality, or what popular language calls gaslighting. The term originates from the 1938 play Gas Light, in which a husband tries to convince his wife that she is imagining changes in their environment to undermine her sanity.
In modern psychology, gaslighting describes attempts to destabilize others by denying obvious facts or insisting that events happened differently than they clearly did.
Political leaders have always argued over facts, but gaslighting operates differently. Its purpose is not merely to dispute evidence but to erode trust in shared reality itself. Trump, and now many of his advisors, have repeatedly insisted that events witnessed by millions either did not happen or occurred differently from how they were widely reported.
When confronted with criticism, Trump often shifts the focus to the critic’s supposed dishonesty or poor character rather than to the substance of the claim. Over time, the debate moves away from evidence and toward competing claims about who can be trusted.
A third pattern identified by psychologists studying abuse is the recurring cycle of conflict. Research on domestic abuse, notably by Lenore E. Walker, describes a sequence in which tension builds, an outburst occurs, justification follows, and then the cycle begins again with a new conflict.
Anyone following modern political news can recognize a similar rhythm. A target emerges, perhaps a journalist, a rival politician, or a former aide. Rhetoric escalates. Trump calls them a name. A public attack follows. Critics respond, and the reaction becomes proof of bias or persecution. Soon, attention shifts to another target, and the cycle begins again.
It is a non-stop cul-de-sac of conflict.
Yet another element deepens the psychological effect: chaos. In many abusive environments, unpredictability is not accidental. It is part of the control mechanism. If the rules are constantly changing, those around the dominant figure must remain focused on the leader’s moods and actions. Stability disappears, and attention narrows to whatever crisis the leader creates next.
Trump’s political style operates in precisely this way. A new controversy erupts before the previous one has even settled. A dramatic statement appears, dominating headlines and social media feeds. Institutions scramble to respond. Critics react, supporters rally, and the political system becomes consumed by the latest disruption. Then, just as quickly, attention shifts to another confrontation. Trump used the chaos to divert attention (i.e., Epstein Files) and manipulate the narrative.
The effect is disorienting. Chaos scrambles the normal rhythms of democratic accountability. Instead of sustained debate over policy, something Trump never does, public attention jumps from crisis to crisis. In that environment, the leader often gains an advantage: when the landscape is unstable, the person who created the disruption is also the person most comfortable navigating it.
For the public, the experience can be overwhelming. Constant upheaval intensifies the emotional vigilance that many citizens already feel. It becomes difficult to distinguish between genuine emergencies and manufactured drama. People oscillate between hyper-engagement and total withdrawal, trying to manage the psychological strain.
The broader cultural consequences are significant. One is the gradual normalization of cruelty. When humiliation becomes routine in political discourse, expectations about public behavior begin to shift. Supporters may view insults as justified retaliation, while opponents respond with equal hostility. Political argument becomes personal warfare.
Political psychologists have long warned about the effects of leadership built around threat and loyalty. Researchers such as Bob Altemeyer and Karen Stenner have shown that leaders who frame critics as enemies can intensify divisions among their followers. It is a common tactic of authoritarians. Supporters are encouraged to see disagreement not as normal democratic debate but as a danger to the group itself.
Paradoxically, the same behaviors that exhaust many citizens can strengthen loyalty among supporters. Abusive dynamics often create powerful emotional bonds between Trump and his MAGA loyalists. When a leader insists that journalists, political opponents, and institutions are conspiring enemies, supporters may feel that defending the leader is equivalent to defending themselves. Conflict becomes solidarity. Each attack reinforces the sense that the leader is fighting on behalf of the group.
In this way, the cycle feeds itself. Chaos generates conflict. Conflict generates outrage. Outrage deepens loyalty among supporters and intensifies hostility among opponents. The leader remains at the center of the storm, drawing energy from the very turbulence that leaves the broader public drained.
Meanwhile, the social fabric frays. Families argue over politics. Friendships strain under ideological pressure. Trust erodes not only in institutions but also among citizens themselves. The sense that Americans share a common civic space begins to fade.
Democracy cannot function well under those conditions. Its institutions depend not only on elections and laws but also on cultural norms: respect for opponents, tolerance of criticism, and a willingness to argue from shared facts. These habits allow a diverse society to disagree without descending into permanent hostility.
When Trump instead mirrors the dynamics of abuse, humiliation, gaslighting, manipulation, and the strategic creation of chaos, the damage spreads far beyond any individual confrontation. It poisons the emotional atmosphere in which citizens live.
And that atmosphere matters. A nation constantly braced for the next political eruption begins to behave like a household living under chronic tension. People withdraw, lash out, or grow numb. Over time, the extraordinary becomes ordinary.
The greater danger is not only that abusive dynamics harm their immediate targets. It is that citizens gradually begin to accept those dynamics as the natural language of power.
Democracies, however, are built on different premises; that leadership should elevate public life rather than degrade it, that disagreement should challenge ideas rather than destroy people, and that power should strengthen the civic bonds that hold a society together.
A democracy cannot remain healthy if its citizens feel as though they are living inside a permanent storm of conflict and chaos. Ultimately, the question Americans must confront is not only who holds power, but what kind of civic environment that power creates, and whether the nation is willing to insist on something better.
I don’t want to leave you feeling helpless and without agency in the face of such an abusive leader. So, here are some practical ways you can insulate yourself from the emotional distress that Trump is deliberately trying to inflict upon you.
The first defense is surprisingly simple: limit exposure to the chaos. Abusive dynamics depend on constant attention. Every new insult, every manufactured controversy, demands an emotional reaction. Citizens can reclaim a measure of control by stepping back from the endless cycle of outrage, such as checking the news deliberately rather than compulsively, and refusing to let every political eruption dictate their emotional state. Understanding the abusive dynamic allows you to manage it.
Personally, I refuse to give Trump even five seconds of my time. When he is on television, I either mute it or turn it off. Everything he says is a lie anyway, so why waste my time?
A second defense is to anchor oneself in reliable sources of information. When leaders attempt to blur the line between fact and fiction, the most important civic act becomes the simplest one: paying attention to credible reporting, documented evidence, and institutions that still value verification. Shared reality is the foundation of democratic debate. Protecting it is a form of civic self-defense.
For me, print media is increasingly where I turn for reliable sources of information. I use a three-source rule. If I read about something that appears in three credible news sources, it is likely true.
Perhaps the most important protection is refusing to mirror the cruelty that abusive politics encourages. It is easy, in an atmosphere of constant provocation, to respond with equal contempt. But democracies depend on citizens who resist that temptation, who argue fiercely about ideas without abandoning the basic recognition that their opponents remain fellow humans and citizens.
Finally, citizens can protect themselves by investing in the parts of civic life that chaos cannot easily destroy: local communities, schools, religious congregations, neighborhood organizations, and friendships that cross political lines. These spaces remind people that the nation is more than its loudest political conflicts.
These small acts of civic self-protection may not end the storm of abusive politics, but they can prevent it from consuming you and the society it seeks to dominate. Abuse thrives on attention, fear, and chaos, but democracy survives when citizens deny it the power to define their civic life.
