# Post ts_111614762099655395 - Post ID: `ts_111614762099655395` - Platform: Truth Social - Posted: 2023-12-20T21:01:51.178Z (UTC) - Deleted: no - Repost: no - Canonical URL: https://trump.fm/post/ts_111614762099655395 - Analysis page: https://trump.fm/post/ts_111614762099655395/analysis ## Post text > https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/trump-allies-rage-over-lawless-colorado-ruling-kicking-him-states-2024-ballot ## Engagement - Likes: 7,136 - Reposts: 1,924 - Replies: 347 - Views: unknown - Metrics collected: 2026-02-01T01:19:51.387Z (UTC) # Analysis _Machine-generated by trump.fm on 2026-03-20T14:51:13.788Z (UTC): a model's reading of this post, not his words. Its psychological terms describe the language, not a clinical assessment of him._ ## Summary This minimalist post — a bare URL with no appended text — represents the managed, aide-curated layer of Trump's December 20 response to the Colorado Supreme Court's historic 4-3 ruling removing him from the primary ballot. The post's psychological work is outsourced entirely to the article headline: 'lawless' delegitimizes the court as itself violating law (a direct inversion of the court's insurrection finding), while 'rage' primes followers on the appropriate emotional register. Authorship is almost certainly aide (Scavino): 4:01 PM EST timing, zero original text, and URL-only format are signatures of managed account activity — in contrast to the same-day authentic posts ('A SAD DAY IN AMERICA!!!', all-caps indictment screed) that carry Trump's raw voice. The psychological dynamic reflects acute narcissistic injury: a state institution has legally declared him an insurrectionist, directly threatening the grandiose self-construct. The managed post channels this injury through proxy voices ('allies'), providing affective distance while amplifying collective grievance. Defense mechanisms include distortion (reframing a legitimate ruling as 'lawless'), projection (attributing rule-violation to the court), and displacement (expressing rage through surrogates). The broader same-day posting pattern — oscillating between raw emotional discharge and curated content amplification — suggests a two-track response system: authentic venting plus strategic narrative management. Danger remains elevated: systematic judicial delegitimization, even in managed form, contributes to an epistemic environment where followers may treat courts as illegitimate actors. # Psychological Analysis: Trump Truth Social Post — December 20, 2023 ## Post Overview The post consists solely of a URL to a *Just The News* article headlined: *"Trump allies rage over lawless Colorado ruling kicking him from state's 2024 ballot."* No appended text. Posted at 21:01 UTC (4:01 PM EST / Mar-a-Lago local time). --- ## Authorship Attribution **Assessment: Aide-authored (high confidence, score 0.15/1.0)** Multiple converging indicators point to Scavino or equivalent aide: - **Timing**: 4:01 PM EST — mid-afternoon, squarely within business hours; not consistent with Trump's documented late-night/early-morning posting pattern. - **Format**: Bare URL, zero appended text. This is a characteristic aide-amplification signature. - **Contrast with same-day authentic posts**: Earlier December 20 posts — *"BIDEN SHOULD DROP ALL OF THESE FAKE POLITICAL INDICTMENTS AGAINST ME"* (all-caps, exclamation marks, run-on grievance) and *"A SAD DAY IN AMERICA!!!"* — display all hallmarks of authentic Trump authorship. This post shares none of those features. - **Editorial curation**: The article was selected precisely because its headline performs the emotional and rhetorical work Trump would otherwise do manually. The choice is calculated, not impulsive. **Interpretation**: The same-day posting pattern reveals a two-track response system to the Colorado ruling — raw authentic emotional discharge in early posts, followed by managed narrative amplification through curated content sharing. This post represents the latter tier. --- ## Triggering Event The Colorado Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling on December 19, 2023, declaring Trump disqualified from the primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment constitutes the triggering narcissistic injury. This is among the most severe institutional challenges to Trump's identity: a state court has officially designated him an insurrectionist as a matter of law, directly threatening both his political viability and his self-concept as a uniquely wronged figure fighting a corrupt system. --- ## Level 1: Dispositional Traits Assessable only indirectly via article selection and same-day posting context: - **Neuroticism** (angry hostility, vulnerability): Highly salient. The article title's use of "rage" and "lawless" reflects the affective register consistent with Trump's established high-neuroticism baseline under threat. - **Agreeableness** (negative pole): The framing is adversarial and zero-sum. No acknowledgment of the court's legitimacy. - **Openness** (rigidity): Foreclosed. The ruling is not engaged on its constitutional merits — it is categorically dismissed as "lawless." --- ## Level 2: Characteristic Adaptations (Motives and Schemas) **Dominant motive: Power/agency** — restoration of control over a situation in which institutional authority is being exercised against him. **Schemas revealed by article selection**: - *Self*: Victim of institutional persecution; surrounded by loyal allies who share the injury. - *Others (courts)*: Corrupt actors operating outside the law when they rule adversely. - *World*: A contest between legitimate popular support (polls showing Trump leads) and illegitimate institutional obstruction (courts removing him from ballots). The same-day posting sequence is revealing: Trump bracketed this curated link between polling data showing his leads and raw grievance posts — constructing a narrative of popular legitimacy vs. illegitimate institutional attack. --- ## Level 3: Narrative Identity - **Protagonist role**: Victim-fighter — persecuted by a "lawless" system, defended by loyal allies, vindicated by popular polling. - **Narrative sequence**: Contamination — the democratic process (ballot access) has been corrupted by activist courts. - **Contrasting other**: The Colorado Supreme Court / the judiciary as institutional antagonist. - **Identity claim** (implicit via proxy): *I am so threatening to the corrupt establishment that they must break the law itself to stop me.* This narrative is psychologically efficient: ballot removal, which might signal disqualification in normative political terms, is reframed as evidence of the subject's exceptional threat to entrenched power — transforming defeat into proof of importance. --- ## Level 4: Clinical Indicators ### Narcissistic Dynamics **Trigger**: Classic narcissistic injury — an authoritative institutional verdict labels him an insurrectionist (exposure of the grandiose self as rule-violating). The injury is acute: this is the first such ruling in American history. **Narcissistic state**: Vulnerable (wounded, persecuted) — contrasted with the grandiose state visible in polling-amplification posts from the same day. **Narcissistic rage**: Present but mediated. The raw expression appears in the all-caps posts earlier that day; this post manages the rage through surrogate voice ("allies rage"). Intensity moderate; proportionality low (a constitutional court proceeding warrants legal challenge, not delegitimization). ### Defense Mechanisms | Defense | Level | Evidence | |---|---|---| | **Distortion** | Pathological | Framing a procedurally legitimate court ruling as "lawless" reshapes external reality to meet inner need (denial of the court's authority) | | **Projection** | Immature | The court found Trump violated constitutional order; sharing "lawless" framing attributes rule-violation to the court itself — projecting the transgression outward | | **Displacement** | Neurotic | Rage is expressed through the voices of unnamed "allies" rather than directly, providing affective distance | ### Malignant Narcissism Assessment (Kernberg) | Component | Expression in Context | |---|---| | **Narcissistic features** | Entitlement to ballot access treated as absolute; adverse ruling framed as attack on specialness | | **Antisocial features** | Contempt for court authority; delegitimization of legal process | | **Paranoid features** | Ruling contextualized within broader persecution narrative (same-day: "EVERY CASE I AM FIGHTING IS THE WORK OF THE DOJ & WHITE HOUSE") | | **Ego-syntonic sadism** | Not present in this specific post | --- ## Rhetorical & Propaganda Analysis **Primary technique: Surrogate voice / proxy messaging** The account avoids direct assertion by amplifying a third-party headline. Trump does not say "the ruling is lawless" — the ally-facing media does, and Trump amplifies it. This provides rhetorical deniability while achieving the same legitimacy-attack function. **Key loaded terms (in article headline)**: - *"Lawless"*: Characterizes the court as itself violating law — a precise rhetorical inversion of the court's finding. - *"Rage"*: Primes followers on the appropriate emotional register; normalizes intense anger as the correct response. - *"Kicking him"*: Physical metaphor for institutional action — frames judicial process as an act of aggression. **Propaganda techniques identified**: - **Institutional delegitimization**: Positioning an adverse ruling as outside the law undermines court authority without requiring engagement with the constitutional argument. - **Firehose-adjacent volume**: This post is part of a five-post same-day sequence, each reinforcing either persecution or electoral dominance framing — consistent with volume-based reality saturation. --- ## Gaslighting & Reality Distortion **Present**: The characterization of the Colorado ruling as "lawless" inverts the factual situation. The court conducted a procedurally regular proceeding under its jurisdiction to apply constitutional text. The ruling was legally contested (and ultimately reversed by SCOTUS on different grounds) but was not lawless. Framing it as such demands followers adopt a false characterization as a loyalty test — a gaslighting dynamic. --- ## Archetypal Analysis (Jungian) **Primary archetype**: **Victim/Martyr** — the persecution frame is dominant. The subject is being removed from a ballot by forces operating outside the law. **Secondary archetype**: **Hero/Savior** — implicit in the same-day polling posts; popular legitimacy contrasted with institutional obstruction constructs a savior narrative whose path is being blocked by corrupt gatekeepers. **Shadow projection**: The court, which has ruled on insurrection (chaos-introduction), is labeled "lawless" — projecting the chaos attribute outward. --- ## Order / Chaos Dynamics **Positioning**: *Order attacker* (targeting the court as illegitimate) while simultaneously *order restorer* (the subject represents the legitimate popular will being suppressed). **Asymmetric application**: Judicial institutions get the chaos label ("lawless") while Trump's electoral support gets the order/legitimacy frame (same-day polling posts). --- ## Danger Assessment: **Elevated** This specific post does not contain direct threats, violent imagery, or dehumanizing language. However, it contributes to: 1. **Judicial delegitimization**: Systematic framing of adverse courts as "lawless" erodes institutional trust and can normalize extralegal responses among the audience. 2. **Grievance architecture**: The Colorado ruling, framed as persecution within a sustained five-post same-day sequence, reinforces the persecution narrative that historically precedes mobilization rhetoric. 3. **Epistemic closure reinforcement**: Followers who accept "lawless" as factual cannot engage with the court's actual constitutional reasoning — creating a closed information environment. Danger is elevated, not high: the post is managed and indirect, lacking the explicit target-plus-grievance-plus-implied-action structure of stochastic terrorism. --- ## Fact Verification | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |-------|---------|----------| | "Colorado ruling 'kicks Trump from state's 2024 ballot'" | **Mostly True** | Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 on December 19, 2023 that Trump is disqualified from the primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Ruling was stayed until January 4 pending appeal. U.S. Supreme Court ultimately reversed in Trump v. Anderson (March 2024). | | "Ruling characterized as 'lawless'" | **False** | The Colorado Supreme Court followed established appellate procedure. While the ruling was legally controversial and ultimately reversed by SCOTUS on standing/enforcement grounds (not on the merits of the insurrection finding), it was not procedurally lawless. Characterizing it as such is political framing, not legal analysis. | Overall Veracity: 40% ## Cognitive Assessment Not assessable from a bare URL post. No language production is present. Same-day authentic posts show perseveration on persecution themes and hyperbolic framing consistent with established baseline — no marked deviation detected. ## Authorship Analysis **Aide-Written** (score: 15%) ### Indicators - Post is a bare URL with zero appended text - Timestamp of 21:01 UTC converts to 4:01 PM EST at Mar-a-Lago (December = EST, UTC-5), squarely within business hours - URL-share-only format is a Scavino signature behavior - Contrast with same-day authentic posts: all-caps 'BIDEN SHOULD DROP ALL OF THESE FAKE POLITICAL INDICTMENTS' and 'A SAD DAY IN AMERICA!!!' show Trump's raw voice; this does not - Article selection is editorially calculated — the headline's language ('lawless,' 'rage') does the emotional work without Trump having to own the words directly ## Psychological Profile ### State **Vulnerable State** **Trigger:** Narcissistic Injury — Exposure (Colorado Supreme Court 4-3 ruling removing Trump from the primary ballot under 14th Amendment Section 3) **Rage:** Intensity 50% targeting Colorado Supreme Court / judiciary broadly - Proportionality: 30% Sentiment: -0.55 ### Clinical **Malignant Narcissism:** - Narcissistic: 70% - Antisocial: 40% - Paranoid: 60% - Sadism: 10% **Defense Mechanisms:** - distortion (pathological) - projection (immature) - displacement (neurotic) **Cognitive Complexity:** - Complexity: 10% **Parasocial Techniques:** - Surrogate voice technique — letting the article's framing ('rage,' 'lawless') communicate emotional state without Trump assuming ownership of the language - Validation amplification — implicitly rallying the audience around the shared grievance without issuing a direct call to action ## Danger Assessment **ELEVATED** ### Indicators - Systematic delegitimization of the judiciary as 'lawless' contributes to an environment where followers may view judicial actors as illegitimate targets - Pattern across same-day posts: the Colorado ruling, framed as persecution, feeds into a broader grievance architecture that has historically preceded mobilization rhetoric - Characterizing constitutional process as 'lawless' erodes institutional trust, which at elevated intensity can normalize extralegal responses among the audience ### Gaslighting - Framing a constitutional court ruling as 'lawless' inverts the legal reality — the court found Trump violated constitutional order, yet the shared framing positions the court as the rule-breaker - The headline's language implicitly demands followers adopt the 'lawless' characterization as factual rather than as a contested political opinion ## Fact Checks (2) _The model's verdicts from 2026-03-20._ > Colorado ruling 'kicks Trump from state's 2024 ballot' **MOSTLY TRUE** Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 on December 19, 2023 that Trump is disqualified from the primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Ruling was stayed until January 4 pending appeal. U.S. Supreme Court ultimately reversed in Trump v. Anderson (March 2024). Sources: Pre-researched historian events > Ruling characterized as 'lawless' **FALSE** The Colorado Supreme Court followed established appellate procedure. While the ruling was legally controversial and ultimately reversed by SCOTUS on standing/enforcement grounds (not on the merits of the insurrection finding), it was not procedurally lawless. Characterizing it as such is political framing, not legal analysis. Sources: General constitutional law knowledge Overall Veracity: 40% ## Tags - Colorado ballot ruling (100%) - judiciary delegitimization (85%) - narcissistic injury response (80%) - aide-authored (90%) - proxy messaging (75%) - 14th Amendment Section 3 (90%) ## That day _From trump.fm's machine-generated digest of the day, not his words._ **Colorado Ballot Ruling Triggers All-Day Narcissistic Crisis: Rage Cascades, Surrogate Validators, and a Lincoln Delusion** Trump spent the day consumed by the Colorado Supreme Court's historic ruling removing him from the state's primary ballot — the first such decision in American history. His evening and early morning posts swung between raw emotional outbursts and curated media clips attacking the court, culminating in a demand that Biden drop all criminal and civil cases. By afternoon, aides shifted the feed toward favorable polling numbers to stabilize the narrative. The day closed with Trump comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, falsely claiming Democrats similarly blocked Lincoln from the ballot in 1860 — a historically inaccurate parallel that captured the blend of grandiosity and grievance defining the entire day. Full digest for 2023-12-20: https://trump.fm/date/2023-12-20/analysis ## Citation - APA: Trump, D. J. (2023, December 20). https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/trum... [Social media post]. Truth Social. trump.fm. https://trump.fm/post/ts_111614762099655395 - MLA: Trump, Donald J. "https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/trump-allies-r..." Truth Social, 20 Dec. 2023. trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_111614762099655395. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026. - Chicago: Donald J. Trump, "https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/trump-allies-r...," Truth Social, December 20, 2023, archived at trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_111614762099655395. ## For agents - Site overview: https://trump.fm/llms.txt - API specification: https://trump.fm/openapi.json - MCP server: https://trump.fm/mcp (search and fetch tools, no auth) - This post as JSON: https://trump.fm/api/posts/ts_111614762099655395 - Analysis as JSON: https://trump.fm/api/analysis/ts_111614762099655395 - All citation formats: https://trump.fm/api/cite/ts_111614762099655395 - Same day: https://trump.fm/date/2023-12-20 - The record alone, without the analysis: https://trump.fm/post/ts_111614762099655395.md?analysis=false _Markdown view of a trump.fm page. Post, analysis, date, feed, contradictions, search and about pages answer in markdown at their URL with `.md` appended (`/index.md` for the home page), or when sent `Accept: text/markdown`._