From Epstein’s Island to Obama’s Inbox: Trump’s Dark Diversion Strategy

When the heat’s on, invent a scandal — especially if it targets America’s first Black president…

When the walls start closing in, Donald Trump doesn’t lawyer up: he doubles down. With Epstein’s ghost rattling through the headlines and the threat of explosive disclosures looming, Team Trump has rolled out its most cynical, racially-charged distraction yet: accuse Barack Obama of treason.

It’s not about justice. It’s not about truth. It’s a deliberate psyop meant to hijack the news cycle, enrage the MAGA base, and erase Epstein’s name from every chyron in America.

Which is why it appears that the Trump White House is closing in on the conclusion that the only story that could be “big enough” to blow Epstein off the front pages will be “Obama Committed Treason!”

They’re busily assigning investigators, FBI agents, lawyers, and others in the Justice Department to find everything they can that might implicate our first Black president in having committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Democrats and many in the media are essentially ridiculing the effort, arguing that nobody is naïve enough — or malicious enough — to believe such a story. But things that seem illogical or even flat-out nuts to reporters and Democrats may, according to a scientific study published in recent months, make perfect sense for Trump supporters.

Titled Malevolent vs. Benevolent Dispositions and Conservative Political Ideology in the Trump Era and published last fall in The Journal of Research in Personality, the authors looked at the personality factors that showed up consistently among Trump supporters versus the rest of the American population.

What they found is both shocking and absolutely consistent with the observations and suspicions of those of us who have to regularly interact with Trump followers: they’re sick, at least by the standards of liberal democracy. They lack empathy and even get pleasure out of watching other people in pain.

In the conclusions section of their published article, the University of North Texas Psychology Department researchers explain:

“We examined the associations between broad dispositions with political ideology that included views of Trump. Malevolent (+) and benevolent (− ) dispositions predicted this ideology. In aggregate, those favorable to Trump reported greater malevolent and lower benevolent propensities, less empathy, and more enjoyment of others’ suffering.”

Given that Trump is quickly moving America toward autocracy, it shouldn’t be surprising that he himself displays the so-called Dark Triad of personality characteristics that are so easily observed in historical figures like Hitler, Pinochet, Mussolini, and modern-day autocrats like Putin, Orbán, and Erdoğon:

“Autocrats manifest socially aversive personality, including malevolent traits in the Dark Triad: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, and the same has been found for Trump. Similar results have been found for authoritarians’ loyal foot soldiers. … Thus, it is not surprising perhaps that voters with aversive traits tend to prefer aversive political figures.”

They point out that there are numerous studies that have been done over the years showing that people with “malevolent” dispositions tend toward conservatism while those with “benevolent” personalities are more likely to be liberals. They define their terms in clear, analytical language:

“A malevolent disposition reflects wishing ill will or doing harm to others, while a benevolent disposition involves intending or showing goodwill or kindness to others. …

“A malevolent disposition is measured via aversive features of Machiavellian manipulativeness, psychopathic callousness, and narcissistic self-absorption, all negatively associated with empathy and positively associated with antisocial behavior.”

As they note, Trump rings all the malevolent bells, but they wanted to know if his followers also had the same antisocial personality traits:

“A political candidate who boasts about being able to shoot someone can be understood in terms of a malevolent disposition. We seek to understand the voters who embrace such a politician and propose that insight may be gained by examining the links between malevolent dispositions and political ideology.

“Taken together, we propose that more extreme (malevolent) dispositions are necessary for understanding today’s modern incarnation of conservatism that includes a positive view of Trump.”

What they found was that — among white men — the stronger the constellation of antisocial personality characteristics a person carried, the more likely they were to support Trump and support him with a fervor that reflected the intensity of those qualities.

It was so vivid that even those on the extreme end of the antisocial spectrum — psychopaths — were generally enthusiastic about Trump and his policies, regardless (or perhaps because) of how many people those policies hurt:

“Across two different samples, we found a positive association between conservative ideology/positive view of Trump and malevolent disposition. For white men, psychopathic propensities predicted conservative ideology/positive view of Trump. …

“Thus, the current results add to a growing literature on a link between malevolent (aversive) dispositions and conservative ideology. Moreover, our results are in line with Barber and Pope (2019) who found those tied to a Trumpian symbolic ideology were most inclined to be uncivil to others. The results from both samples found that latent psychopathic and malevolent disposition means were significantly elevated among individuals who viewed Trump favorably.”

Interestingly, they noted that among racial minorities and women carrying many of these same personality characteristics, there wasn’t the same strong correlation between antisocial personalities and support for Trump; they mused that “sociocultural factors must be at play as well.”

This was because, they concluded, discrimination and the violence often associated with it had shaped even the authoritarians among minorities and women to be more liberal, more accepting of others, and less willing to go along with policies that hurt other people:

“Longitudinal research suggests that race/ethnicity may moderate the associations of RWA (Right Wing Authoritarianism) and SDO (Social Dominance Orientation) with conservative political behavior and gender might moderate the association between personality and conservatism with a stronger association for males than females. These moderation effects may be due in part to the fact that RWA and SDO are linked with racism and sexism.”

Which brings us to the big question they must be debating right now in the White House: Will indicting or even trying Obama for treason be enough to cause even “liberal” college-educated reporters and media executives to decide that it’s a big enough story to eclipse their now-nearly-constant coverage of Trump’s association with Epstein and the young women and girls they are widely believed to have exploited?

Trump and his people already know that going after our nation’s only Black president is good politics when it comes to their base, and right now that’s the group they’re most freaked out about losing. If the base goes, Trump won’t be far behind; it wasn’t until Nixon’s public approval ratings had collapsed among the GOP base in 1974 that Barry Goldwater felt safe visiting the White House and telling him it was time to leave.

That suggests that they’ll go all in on attacking Obama, perhaps even manufacturing information or — like Tulsi Gabbard is now doing — coming up with straw man arguments that are close enough to truth to confuse the majority of Americans. The strategy seems to be working over on Fox “News” and on rightwing hate radio, which have been pounding on the Obama “treason” story for several days now with few signs of letting up.

I’m skeptical, however, that mainstream media outlets will go along with this unless they’re subjected to overwhelming pressure from the Trump White House. And until those news and opinion operations have a change of focus, Trump is going to find it very hard to put Epstein and his victims behind him.

Their second bet on this, being acted on by House Speaker Mike Johnson, is to assume that if they can shut down Congress for a month it’ll put a halt to all political conversations during the August summer vacation season, leading to a recess of sorts on the Epstein issue. Historically — as I’ve learned from doing political talk radio for 23 years now — the summer is pretty dead when it comes to politics.

This is probably wishful thinking in the Epstein/Trump case, however, because Trump can’t keep himself off the TV. He has a deep, neurotic need for attention and approval (which he interprets as love) that, as I lay out in detail in my new book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, drives him to constantly draw attention to himself.

Also, when Congress reconvenes in September it’s likely the discharge petition requiring a full confidential disclosure to members of Congress of the Epstein files — that will have “ripened” by then and thus be subject to a vote — will still be there.

Nonetheless, because Trump and the people around him all suffer from the same collection of personality disorders and assume that most other people think the same way they do, I’d bet that they’ll still go after Obama in as big a way as they can.

This isn’t just a political maneuver: it’s a scorched-earth strategy born of desperation and malevolence. Trump and his enablers know their only way out is down, dragging the country with them into a pit of conspiracy, vengeance, and manufactured outrage.

If the media blinks, if Democrats shrug, if the public falls for the bait, the damage won’t just be another headline. It’ll be a rupture in the fabric of truth itself.

The only question now is: will America call the bluff, or fall for the con?

Will it succeed?

Will it backfire?

Will Obama finally get up on his hind legs and start fighting (unlike when the GOP stole his nomination of Garland to the Supreme Court and he didn’t say much at all)?

Will JD Vance finally get the shot at the presidency that he so clearly seems to crave?

Stay tuned…

Louise’s Daily Song: “Trump’s Treason Theater”:

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink comes out soon and is now available for pre-order.
You can follow me on Blue Sky here: https://bsky.app/profile/thomhartmann.bsky.social