Post from Truth Social

Post Analysis: "Gee, Rupert Murdoch used to like me a lot when I was President!" — May 18, 2023

Authorship Attribution

Local Time Assessment: Trump was almost certainly at Mar-a-Lago on May 18, 2023 — the previous day's post references the ARAMCO Ladies Championship at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach County over the coming weekend, placing him in the Palm Beach area. EDT (UTC−4) converts the 16:18 UTC timestamp to 12:18 PM local time — solidly within business hours. This is a weak indicator of aide authorship by timing alone.

However, the content overwhelmingly signals authentic Trump:

• "Gee" is a characteristically Trumpian opener — dated, folksy, doing double duty as mock innocence and sarcasm
• The emotional register is raw and private-feeling: processing a loyalty withdrawal in public is impulsive behavior
• The sentence is structurally simple but psychologically dense, not the cleaned-up register of Scavino-drafted material
• No event announcement, schedule, or promotional content — purely affective

Verdict: Medium-high confidence authentic Trump. The midday timing is the only counterindicator; everything else reads as spontaneous.

Psychological Analysis

This is a deceptively spare post. A single sentence, eight words of substance, yet it encodes a complete narcissistic injury response cycle.

The Trigger

The immediate context: Fox News and the New York Post had been distancing from Trump since late 2020/January 6, with Murdoch publicly and privately warming to Ron DeSantis as a more electable 2024 candidate. The previous day's posts (May 17) show Trump sharing multiple articles about DeSantis losing endorsements — he is actively monitoring the primary loyalty landscape. A fresh reminder of Murdoch's defection (the attached image likely referencing a Murdoch-related headline) prompted this response.

The trigger is a narcissistic injury of the abandonment subtype: a powerful former admirer has transferred approval to a rival.

"Gee" — Close Reading

This word is doing extraordinary work. "Gee" functions simultaneously as:

1. Mock innocence — feigned surprise that performs non-threatening curiosity
2. Sarcasm — the exaggerated mildness signals the opposite of what's felt
3. Affect regulation — a verbal buffer that allows expression of grievance while maintaining a veneer of casual bemusement
4. Nostalgia marker — the exclamation is dated, mid-century American, locating Trump in a particular emotional register

It is a signature Trumpian verbal tic — appearing across decades of his public utterances — and its presence is a strong authorship marker.

"Used to like me a lot"

The past tense construction "used to" explicitly marks the loss. Trump is not speculating or implying — he is naming the change directly. The qualifier "a lot" amplifies the scale of the withdrawal, emphasizing how much approval has been lost. This is grief processing via public utterance: the narcissistic supply (Murdoch's admiration) has dried up and is being mourned openly.

"When I was President"

This phrase performs two simultaneous functions:

1. Nostalgic status invocation: a reference to past grandeur and power, implicitly mourned
2. Critique of Murdoch's conditionality: the implication is that Murdoch's affection was tied to Trump's institutional power, not to Trump himself — exposing Murdoch as a transactional actor rather than a genuine ally

This is the vulnerable narcissistic pole: rather than attacking Murdoch directly (the grandiose response), Trump is lamenting the loss in quasi-private terms, as if musing aloud. This oscillation toward vulnerability — rare in Trump's public communications — is clinically notable.

Defense Mechanisms

Passive aggression (immature): The grievance is expressed indirectly, through apparent puzzlement rather than direct confrontation. The sarcastic "Gee" coats the attack in innocent affect.

Displacement (neurotic): Trump's attention is displaced from the far more threatening simultaneous legal events (Parlatore's resignation May 17; Jack Smith's classified documents probe intensifying; the Durham Report) onto a complaint about Murdoch's reduced admiration. The grievance about loyalty is safer to express than the existential legal anxieties.

Rationalization: By framing Murdoch's behavior as tied to his presidential status ("when I was President"), Trump constructs a narrative in which the loss of support is understandable — Murdoch is loyal to power, not to Trump — which preserves some self-coherence.

Malignant Narcissism Components

• Narcissistic features (high): The post is entirely structured around the question of who admires Trump. Murdoch's reduced admiration is treated as a notable world event worth broadcasting.
• Paranoid features (moderate): There is an implicit tracking of loyalty — who was "with me" and who has defected — characteristic of the paranoid relational schema.
• Antisocial/sadistic features (minimal): This post is not aggressive. The absence of a direct attack on Murdoch is notable; Trump is in a receptive/wounded state rather than a retaliatory one.

Narrative Identity (McAdams Level 3)

• Protagonist role: The abandoned patron — once powerful enough to command Murdoch's affection, now reduced to nostalgic lament
• Narrative sequence: Contamination — a good relationship (Murdoch's admiration during presidency) spoiled by betrayal (conditional loyalty withdrawn when power was lost)
• Identity claim: "I was President" — the identity anchor invoked to mark the loss
• Contrasting other: Murdoch, the fair-weather ally, implicitly contrasted with Trump's sense of deserving unconditional loyalty

Cognitive Assessment

The post is a single simple sentence. Low syntactic complexity, but this is appropriate for the medium and the emotional state. No word-finding difficulties, paraphasias, or temporal confusion evident. The sentence is coherent and precisely targeted. No deviation from cognitive baseline flagged here.

Danger Assessment

No danger indicators present. No dehumanizing language, no violent imagery, no eliminationist rhetoric. The post is emotionally reactive but not directed at any vulnerable target.

Summary

A textbook expression of the vulnerable narcissistic state. "Gee, Rupert Murdoch used to like me a lot when I was President!" packs considerable psychological content into eight words: "Gee" encodes sarcasm and affect regulation; "used to like me a lot" directly names the supply withdrawal; "when I was President" mourns lost status while implicitly attributing Murdoch's defection to conditional loyalty. Trump is in an uncharacteristically receptive/wounded mode — lamenting rather than attacking — representing the less-visible pole of his narcissistic oscillation. Contextually, the post reads as displacement from far more threatening simultaneous events (Parlatore's resignation May 17, Jack Smith probe intensifying). Mourning Murdoch's changed affections is psychologically safer than engaging with existential legal threats. The "when I was President" framing also reveals the core injury: Trump's presidential identity — his primary self-concept — is now a past-tense construction, and Murdoch's defection confirms the transactional nature of elite loyalty in the post-presidency period. No danger indicators present.

Fact Verification

Overall Veracity: 80%