Relax, Trump is stone cold sane | Fox News
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2 days ago - Relax, Trump is stone cold sane. Keith Ablow. By Dr. Keith ... Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.ABLOW SAY RELAX: Trump Is 'Stone Cold Sane ... - Daily Kos
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1 day ago - In recent weeks there have been several reports characterizing the mental stability of President Donald Trump. Some of these have been ...
In recent weeks there have been several reports characterizing the mental stability of President Donald Trump. Some of these have been partisan assessments by political opponents. Others have been more detailed warnings from mental health professionals about his "malignant narcissism". There have even been bipartisan bills drafted to mandate a White House psychiatrist. However, "Doctor" Keith Ablow, a member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, has his own professional diagnosis that comes to a different conclusion. He believes that Trump is as sane as you and I. But the reasons he gives are - well - batshit crazy.
Ablow starts off with a disclaimer that he has never examined Trump. It is considered unethical for doctors to make diagnoses of people who have never personally been under their care. Funny, Ablow never bothered to offer that disclaimer when he was unethically (and absurdly) diagnosing President Obama. What follows is a rundown from his latest article for Fox News. In it Ablow says Trump is totally sane because:
He's rich and famous:
"When a man acquires billions of dollars through complex real estate transactions, invests in many countries, goes on to phenomenal success in television and turns his name into a worldwide brand, it is very unlikely that he is mentally unstable."
Of course. Everyone knows there aren't any wealthy business people with mental illness. They can just buy some new sanity if they lose theirs. Rich people are always perfect in body, mind, and bank account. Take Howard Hughes for example.
He's a good family man:
"When the same man obviously enjoys the love and respect of his children and his wife, who seem to rely on him for support and guidance, it is extraordinarily unlikely that he is mentally unstable."
Indeed. And Trump is so stable that he's currently on his third wife. And each of his marriages have been marred by flagrant and public infidelities. Plus, his current wife and their child rely on him so much for support that they declined to live with him in the White House.
He's a political wrecking crew:
"When the same man walks into the political arena and deftly defeats 16 Republican opponents and then the Democratic heir-apparent to a two-term president’s administration, the odds of that man being mentally unstable become vanishingly thin."
Because nothing says mental stability like viciously maligning your own party colleagues with childish nicknames and outlandish allegations. Just ask Lyin' Ted Cruz whose father worked with JFK assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
He's a bureaucrat magnet:
"And when that very same man attracts to his team the kind of intellect and gravitas represented (to name just a few) by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general and commander of the U.S. Central Command, he cannot be mentally deranged. Period. It is a statistical impossibility."
That's right. After all, who ever heard of someone accepting a lucrative and powerful government job when offered one? That's especially true of unqualified nominees like Carson, Rick Perry, and Betsy Devos. And the billionaire, Goldman Sachs, swamp dwellers have their own selfish reasons.
But perhaps the most profoundly absurd defense of Trump's sanity was Ablow's personal testimonial and endorsement of Trump branded products and services:
He's a walking infomercial
"Anecdotally, by the way, I have never had one bad Trump experience. Not one. I own several of his ties — all of them of the highest quality. I have stayed in his hotels and never had a single complaint (and I am a born complainer). I have eaten in his New York restaurant — flawless service, excellent food. I own an apartment at Trump Place in Manhattan. Impeccable design, sturdy construction, fabulous amenities. A mentally unstable man would be unlikely to deliver superior products across multiple industries, don’t you think?"
Seriously? Ablow thinks that Trump is the picture of sanity because ties manufactured in China, but branded with his name, meet his standards as a consumer. Similarly, Ablow's Trump Place condo is in a building that the Trump Organization developed but does not own. And does any sane person think that Trump is responsible for the food and service at a restaurant with his name plastered on the front?
Ablow went on to suggest that the performance of the stock market is another indication of Trump's mental health. Sure, it's up about 2,000 points since the election. It's notable that none of Trump's fiscal policies have been implemented in that time. Nor would it reflect on his sanity if they were. However, since he's handing out credit, Obama must be super-sane, because the market rose 12,000 points during his presidency. Except that, as noted above, Ablow has already diagnosed Obama as mentally challenged. Nevertheless, it's clear that the markets are still running on the economic policies of the Obama administration.
And if it weren't enough for Ablow to construct a preposterous case for Trump's mental health, he also had to portray his critics as mental deficients. He called anyone who questioned Trump's psychological status "political opportunists, or fools, or both." Then he singled out Sen. Al Franken as an example. Specifically, he called Franken's sanity into question because Franken and Elizabeth Warren are allies and Warren once said she had Native American ancestry. First of all, she only said that because that's what her parents told her. Having never bothered to fact-check her parents doesn't make her nuts. But regardless, how would that reflect on Franken? Ablow's psychological prognosis implies that anyone affiliated with Warren is crazy.
Ablow closes by saying "And they’re calling Trump’s sanity into question? Really, you can’t make this stuff up." Wrong again. Ablow just proved that you can make up whatever the hell you want and Fox News will publish it. After all, this is the same guy who wrote that Donald Trump’s narcissism is exactly what America needs. And my personal favorite, his treatise praising the Unabomber. Now that certifies him as a perfectly sane psychiatrist, don't you think?
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance. Available now at Amazon.And please visit News Corpse on the web
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Relax, Trump is stone cold sane
Fox News-Feb 15, 2017
Let me issue the standard disclaimer of psychiatrists who discuss the mental health of public figures: I have not personally examined President ...
More than 15 years have passed since terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people. And I believe it has taken that long for America to begin to snap out of its version of Stockholm Syndrome and elect a president who doesn’t try to appease our enemies by apologizing for what America represents and dissolving our patriotism in a meaningless ocean of globalism.
"Stockholm Syndome," by the way, is the name given to a phenomenon that gripped hostages taken during a bank robbery in Sweden. The hostages unconsciously adopted the perspectives and demands of their captors, presumably because they intuited that they might not be killed by those who considered them allies—albeit newly-fashioned ones.
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I think Barack Obama’s election was fueled, in large measure, by a similar unconscious phenomenon that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center: We hid behind a leader who never seemed, to me, to like us Americans very much—at least not in our desire for individual autonomy, our insistence on the rights guaranteed by our Constitution and our sense that the world would be better off, if more of the world adopted our core values.
I’m not sure that any other candidate could have—at this moment in history—shaken us out of our contempt for our national character, our complacency about losing our fundamental rights and our turning away from our manifest destiny as Americans and America.
Hillary Clinton, in serving with Barack Obama, in touting open borders (if only in private meetings), in refusing to use the words “radical Islamic terrorism” and in accepting large payments from foreign nations to whom she could be indebted, seemed to promise more of the same—a diluting, rather than crystallizing, of our national identity.
Clinton promised a longer run of Stockholm Syndrome—further denial that the America is truly great and that the world relies on our ingenuity and ideals and ideas to fuel freedom here and, everywhere.
Donald Trump won not only because he promised the middle class jobs, but because it turns out the brainwashing of an entire population to deny their core beliefs and sense of self doesn’t work, forever.
The truth about an individual or a people has a stubborn way of declaring itself, even after being suppressed, for decades, or longer.
Our Stockholm Syndrome could have gone on for another four or eight years, or even longer, of course, but not in the face of someone as blatantly, unapologetically American as Donald Trump—a brash, multi-billionaire entrepreneur and celebrity who strode onto the American political stage like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood and reminded us of what he had lost—namely, ourselves.
His outsized persona was powerful enough medicine to cure our Stockholm Syndrome and remind us that we had been taken hostage and told to parrot a pathological, party line of self-loathing.
I’m not sure that any other candidate could have—at this moment in history—shaken us out of our contempt for our national character, our complacency about losing our fundamental rights and our turning away from our manifest destiny as Americans and America.
A country that was lost and wandering has found its way home, again, thanks to an unlikely hero who is hyperbolically American and apologizes to no one for it.
Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.
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Following Monday’s New York Times story about Hillary Clinton’s debate preparation strategy, which reportedly includes some “advice from psychology experts to help create a personality profile of Mr. Trump to gauge how he may respond to attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary,” the crack team at Fox News unchained the cellar where they store “Dr.” Keith Ablow, peeled him out of his rubber gimp suit, and asked his professional opinion on Clinton’s strategy. On Wednesday’s edition of “Fox & Friends,” the good doctor explained why it’s going to be pretty difficult for Hillary to needle Trump, considering what a perfect specimen of testosterone-fueled mental healthiness this Trump fellow is:
Brian Kilmeade: Yep, the Democratic nominee is consulting psychologists about Trump’s biggest insecurities to bait him into making mistakes on the debate stage.Tucker Carlson: Well, psychiatrist and Fox News Medical A-Team’s Dr. Keith Ablow is here to assess this strategy […] This doesn’t sound like a crazy strategy to me, and it’s something I think that every presidential candidate does during the debates. You’re trying to figure out how to pick at the other guy’s weaknesses. Will this work with Trump?“Dr.” Keith Ablow: Well, sure, it’s something that every candidate probably does, probably should do. Psychology’s a very powerful tool to unearth what does get under people’s skin, if you will. But listen, with Donald Trump, kind of what you see is what you get. I have to say, when the small hands issue was raised during the debate, this supposedly got the Clinton campaign very excited. They thought, “Man, he’s off his game.” He wasn’t off his game at all. Freud would have been standing up, like applauding, standing ovation. To be able to address such an intensely personal issue and say, “Listen, there’s no problem in that department,” to me that showed an incredible degree of psychological strength.
The real question, of course, is whether Dr. Freud, having seen Keith Ablow invoking him on TV this way, might not have simply returned to 19th-Century Vienna and decided to pursue a career in endocrinology. Also, just how tingly was Ablow in his swimsuit area for Trump? As we recall it, the whole
“tiny hands” thing
mostly just made everyone laugh at both Trump and Rubio, but maybe that’s a lot like applause.
Ablow went on to explain that it’s pretty difficult to get under Trump’s skin, since the man really is nothing more than skin and has no psychology at all:
With Donald Trump, he may err, he may make errors in saying what he thinks, telling us the truth, saying things that are gritty, perhaps attacking with some unkind words, which he could scale back, but you know what, his demons are on his sleeve. There’s not a lot of psychoanalysis that hasn’t been presented already.
Dag, man, Hillary Clinton’s going to have a tough time dealing with Trump, who is completely unflappable and never flies off the handle, while Hillary Clinton is a power addict — “Imelda Marcos on steroids,” in Ablow’s expert opinion.
We’re now sort of hoping Trump hires Ablow for his
debate prep team.
This is, after all, the genius who explained that all Newt Gingrich’s extramarital bonings secretly demonstrated his
moral strength,
since he was so virile and attractive to women that they kept throwing themselves at him even though he was already married:
Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.
By this logic, of course, Anthony Weiner should be the mayor of New York City. He could have featured his tweets on campaign posters. The only bizarre thing about that bit of Ablownalysis was that it appeared to infect the National Review’s Kevin Williamson, who predicted
Mitt Romney’s prowess at producing sons
would make him irresistible to women voters, too.
We’ll venture an alternative hypothesis: Some of these rightwing pundits think far too much about, and with, their dicks.
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