NBC, famous for reporting fabrications, sought out two agenda-driven psychologists willing to diagnose Pres. Trump as an “extremely dangerous” liar perpetrating a “sophisticated attempt to gaslight” Americans.
NBCNews.com’s “Mental Health” section recruited a couple of psychologists to psychoanalyze Trump’s claims about the size of the Inauguration Day crowd in a piece titled, “Some Experts Say Trump Team’s Falsehoods Are Classic ‘Gaslighting.’”
Buried in the hit piece, NBC admits that “There's no official estimate for Friday's crowd” and that Trump was relying on an outside source that included people worldwide “watching online and on television.”
NBC ignores the requirement of an “intent to deceive” for Trump to be lying - and not just simply mistaken. NBC has even employed the “lack of intent” argument to defend Hillary Clinton from accusations regarding what appear to be even more obvious lies she told.
But, in Trump’s case, NBC dug up two psychologists, Bryant Welch and Robert Feldman, to declare the president an unparalleled liar intentionally trying to psychologically manipulate the public into doubting its own sanity (“gaslighting”):
“Feldman and Welch both said the statements Trump and his staff made on the very first days in office rise to a new level.”
“The behavior has all the signs of "gaslighting", says clinical psychologist Bryant Welch”
Welch, who wrote a 2008 book entitled "State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind" - but, “who has not personally examined any of the Trump team” - accuses Trump of deviously employing mind-control tactics:
- “This is a pretty systematic, sophisticated attempt to gaslight.”
- "If you make people confused, they are vulnerable. By definition they don't know what to do,"
- "If Donald Trump can undercut America's trust in all media, he then starts to own them and can start to literally implant his own version of reality."
- "Undermine the credibility of the free press and you are home free.”
- "My biggest fear with Donald Trump is that he will experience a significant public humiliation that he cannot run away from. And if that happens I worry about how he will respond."
Feldman, a University of Massachusetts psychologist and deputy chancellor, provides NBC with a diagnosis of Trump that’s even more unprofessional, emotional, and inflammatory in its hateful rhetoric, wild-eyed accusations and presumption of willful fabrications by Trump:
- "It is lies about things that are so easily contradicted that it is amazing in terms of the degree of arrogance and the lack of respect that it shows for the American people," Feldman said.
- "If you are a Trump supporter, you are going to believe whatever he says. That to me is an extraordinarily dangerous situation,"
- "There is a degree of fabrication that the Trump administration already engaging in that is simply breathtaking," he added. "I think the blatant lying is so egregious, it just leads the country down a path which is extremely dangerous."
- "I think the press has a responsibility to all the time call out the lies."
Both of these “experts” appear to have an agenda coloring their analysis of Trump.
Welsh has exhibited extreme liberal bias in his writings for The Huffington Post, producing articles like:
- “Fox News is Not Just Biased — It’s a Cult,”
- "Why Do They Hate Hillary So Much? A Psychologist's View” and
- “Donald Trump And America’s State Of Confusion”
In these pieces, Welch abandons all clinical objectivity and actually accuses Fox News of practicing mind control over its “victims” (viewers), says Trump’s supporters like him because he’s a reality-bending “buffoon,” and diagnoses Hillary Clinton’s opponents as sexist, envious and threated by her competence:
- “Fox is a danger because it is a cult and uses the same destabilizing psychological techniques cults use to undermine the independent functioning of minds they want to control.”
- “Once unleashed, these cult-like techniques can ultimately take on a life of their own and become very dangerous, especially to the most important of all American freedoms, the freedom of thought. The most precise term for these techniques is mind control.”
- “For cults, like Fox News, their objective is total control of the victim’s mind so that the viewer becomes the easily manipulated pawn of the cult.”
- “Hillary’s ‘sin’ is not just her feminine status. It is also her competence. That is what drives the envy. Donald is, for all his presumed material goods, a bit of a buffoon and as such does not make people so envious.”
- “What Donald Trump provides his followers is a psychological extravaganza of emotional self-indulgence and gleeful defiance of the demands of reality each time he speaks. As the demands of that reality have become increasingly too much for many burdened American minds, the more alluring the drug he offers them has become.”
- “Over the next three months we will watch with increasing horror the inner structure of Trump’s mind reveal itself. It will be something to behold.”
For his part, though, Feldman appears to be less of a political activist and more of an opportunist who sees his ticket to fame being his ability to spot liars everywhere. Literally, everywhere, as these two articles on his findings show:
- “Sixty Percent of Your Colleagues Are Lying to You”
- "UMass Amherst Researcher Finds Most People Lie in Everyday Conversation"
Of course, Feldman’s definition of lying appears to include any unintentional “inaccuracies” and people who didn’t even know they were lying, but realized it retroactively after he showed them a video of their comments:
“Most of the people in Feldman’s studies don’t even realize all of the lies they have told until after the conversation when it was played back to them on video.”
Feldman told NBC that "The press has a responsibility to all the time call out the lies."
But, where was NBC when Pres. Obama told Americans “You can keep your plan” under Obamacare, or when Hillary Clinton told Americans the Benghazi attack was prompted by a video?
And, speaking of lies and media responsibility, let’s review some examples of NBC’s legacy of publishing/promoting lies.
From contrived exposés to malicious editing and mischaracterized comments, NBC has earned a reputation for journalistic bias and baloney that might be hard for even Kelly to overcome. Here are just five examples:
- Brian Williams Invents Outrageous War Story
- “Dateline NBC” Rigs Truck Fire to Smear GM
- NBC Maliciously Edits 9-1-1 Audio to Imply Racism by George Zimmerman
- NBC Declares Clinton Rape Accuser ‘Discredited,’ Then Edits Claim Out of Video
- NBC Misleads Public on Priebus Comment on Muslim Registry
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