Politics and Money

[Elroy Jetson]

You Were Gaslighted At Trump's State Of The Union —— https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniesarkis/2019/02/06/you-were-gaslighted-last-night-at-trumps-state-of-the-union/

While most State of the Union speeches deal in hyperbole and getting the crowd riled up, Trump's speech had the same false statements that he has used in other speeches. However, this time it was on a teleprompter, so you didn't hear the standard off-the-cuff falsehoods. These falsehoods were couched between statements of unity and patriotism. But that wasn't the content of the speech.

What's one of the best ways to gaslight people? Couch your speech of falsehoods between positive statements. This is a technique that has been used time and time again in business. Give your divisive message in the middle, but throw the people some positive reinforcement in the beginning.

Why do gaslighters do this? Because first in their mind is getting all eyes on them. (Nancy Pelosi knew this was of utmost importance to Trump.) Gaslighters crave attention. Trump's polls show he is sliding in approval. He also has the 2020 elections to think about. So how do you get people to stay in their seats? Promise them that you are going to talk unification of a country that has been polarized by his behavior.

One of the most dangerous things gaslighting leaders can do is couch their false statements between unifying statements. What do people remember most? What was said at the beginning of your speech, and what was said at the conclusion. The rest is still held in your consciousness, and over time, because a world leader said it, you accept it as fact.

Jennifer Granholm of CNN stated, "This speech was gaslighting the American people by starting out with this sort of unifying stuff about veterans, et cetera...the pre-salting of the ground saying it's going to be a unifying speech. He's going to ask for compromise, so he starts that way, and then he goes into abortion, he goes into immigration, he talks about open borders...no Democrat is talking about open borders...it was a divisive speech in the middle, starting with the military and ending with the military."

One of Trump's falsehoods cited job creation. "We have created 5.3 million new jobs and importantly added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs — something which almost everyone said was impossible to do, but the fact is, we are just getting started," he said.

Since Trump took office in 2017, the economy has added 4.9 million jobs - and 454,000 manufacturing jobs. "That's just a small difference in numbers," you say. Well, in addition to that, job growth is comparable to what it was during periods of Obama's presidency, and it is still significantly lower than manufacturing job creation in the 1990s (New York Times, 2019).

No one said it was "impossible." This is another technique of gaslighters. Set up imaginary quotes from created foes, and state how you have conquered these imaginary statements. The false subtext? This group is against me for no reason, and I proved them wrong. It plays up to the "us versus them," or more accurately with Trump, a "me versus them." He is imagining a conflict that did not happen.

Beware of "half-truths" from gaslighters. These "sort of true" statements and exaggerations are common in Trump's State of the Union speech. When a gaslighter tells something with "truthiness" (to borrow from Stephen Colbert), it is difficult to pick apart the truth from the falsehood. The debates between supporters and non-supporters will circle around these statements, while larger falsehoods slip by. This is by design.

To counter this, the media must continue to fact-check Trump's speeches and statements. For a thorough fact-check of Trump's State of the Union, see this New York Times article, "State of the Union Fact Check: What Trump Got Right and Wrong."


I'm a PhD licensed, board-certified therapist with over 20 years of experience, and I'm the author of Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People - and Break Free.