“I have considerably more moral contempt for the media’s and the left’s obsession with Stormy Daniels than I do for Donald Trump for his alleged night of sinful sex with her,” declares
Dennis Prager, in a statement that perfectly embodies
Anti-Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Prager reveals himself to have an especially acute case of ATDS in the article quoted above. He all but declares Trump’s character vindicated after a discussion of the Stormy Daniels affair. But as with so many other ATDS-influenced takes, there is not a single mention of the 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual assault — as though philandering were morally equivalent to sexual assault. There’s a common script at work here: Describe Trump’s “sexual immorality” in vague terms, and then turn the tables to discuss how bad and hypocritical the critic is for supporting national icons like Martin Luther King Jr. or Bill Clinton.
This bizarre form of inconsistently applied perfectionism can be seen in right-wing publications that downplay highly questionable actions on Trump’s part on the sole basis that minor details were mistaken. For example, after Trump’s now-infamous histrionics at Lafayette Square, where he cleared out protestors to make space for a Bible photo op in front of St. John’s Church,
The Federalist made much of the fact that media outlets might not have been
technically correct in their descriptions of the non-lethal weaponry used to clear out the protesters. Whether or not
The Federalist got this right is beside the point; what matters is that these relatively minor inaccuracies were used to deflect criticism of Trump’s original behavior. The story is
always that the media hates Trump and
never that Trump did something loathsome.
If the media or the “establishment” expresses skepticism of something Trump does or says, ATDS sufferers will rush to be skeptical of the skepticism. Case in point: the undying fascination of many Trump supporters with
hydroxychloroquine. Despite expert consensus — including expert consensus outside the U.S. — that the benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 are at best unproven, Trump supporters continued to
carry water for it until very recently,
for the sole reason that Trump vouched for its utility. Whatever the media and the “establishment” says,
including medical professionals, it simply
cannot be right so long as it contradicts something Trump has said or done.
ndeed, as late as August, Trump supporters were still
insisting that the death toll could have been 10 times lower if only deranged Trump haters hadn’t kept this miracle cure from the populace. If you see every criticism of Trump as an instance of TDS, you might be suffering from ATDS
ober observers of Trump can see that Trump has said and done some things that are
at least racially insensitive. But this is never the headline for sufferers of ATDS. It
can never be the headline for sufferers of ATDS. The top story must always be how the media is doing its best to make Trump out to be “literally Hitler.”