Why Trump uses this psychological trick to appeal to his followers — and the media keeps falling for it

We spent the Obama administration’s first months monitoring attempts to cap the source of BP’s toxic oil spill. We have spent all of Trump’s administration trying to cap the source of his toxic spill. We fret and rail over the damage it’s causing, the many ways it’s weakening everything in its path, especially the resistance.

For all that, we haven’t located the source, the Deep Horizon of his toxic sludge – the root of all his evil. We try to staunch the flow wherever it affects us or we spot it. That has us scrambling, our efforts diluted. He likes us scattered. As Trump Insider Cliff Sims notes, Chaos is Trump’s friend. He can handle it better than anyone.

The closest social scientists get to describing the root of Trump’s evil is the term “dark triad,” the triple-threat of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. The term “dark triad” simply indicates that he’s ruthless, cunning and self-aggrandizing to a clinically diagnosable degree.

View the complete May 23 article by Jeremy Sherman on the AlterNet website here.