# Post ts_111624578241644283

- Post ID: `ts_111624578241644283`
- Platform: Truth Social
- Posted: 2023-12-22T14:38:13.617Z (UTC)
- Deleted: no
- Repost: no
- Canonical URL: https://trump.fm/post/ts_111624578241644283
- Analysis page: https://trump.fm/post/ts_111624578241644283/analysis

## Post text

> https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/last-time-democrats-took-gop-candidate-ballot-was/

## Engagement

- Likes: 5,710
- Reposts: 1,904
- Replies: 169
- Views: unknown
- Metrics collected: 2026-02-01T01:19:51.386Z (UTC)

# Analysis

_Machine-generated by trump.fm on 2026-03-20T14:55:49.277Z (UTC): a model's reading of this post, not his words. Its psychological terms describe the language, not a clinical assessment of him._

## Summary

Three days after the Colorado Supreme Court's historic 4-3 ruling disqualifying Trump from the primary ballot, this post shares a Gateway Pundit article drawing a parallel to Lincoln's 1860 ballot exclusion by Southern Democrats. Aide-authored (9:38 AM local time, bare URL, no original text, part of coordinated same-day media campaign), the post nonetheless executes a psychologically coherent defensive strategy: the Lincoln parallel transforms a vulnerable-state narcissistic injury into a grandiose redemption narrative — persecution as proof of historical greatness, exclusion as prelude to triumph. Defense mechanisms include rationalization (historical precedent normalizes unprecedented ruling), projection (Colorado Supreme Court relabeled 'Democrats'), idealization (Lincoln self-comparison restores grandiosity), and splitting (Democrats as consistent historical oppressors). The historical analogy is materially misleading: Lincoln's 1860 ballot absence reflected party infrastructure gaps, not legal removal proceedings. The URL slug itself ('Democrats took GOP candidate ballot') performs deliberate misattribution, framing a judicial ruling as a partisan act — sustained DARVO consistent with the broader pattern of delegitimizing legal institutions. Danger level is elevated not from this post alone but from its contribution to cumulative judicial delegitimization, with the Lincoln-1860 analogy implicitly invoking a historical context that ended in national rupture. No original text is available for cognitive baseline comparison.

# Analysis: ts_111624578241644283 — Gateway Pundit Link Share (2023-12-22)

## Context and Trigger

This post is one of at least four published within a short window on December 22, 2023, three days after the Colorado Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling disqualifying Trump from the state's primary ballot under 14th Amendment Section 3 — the first such ruling in U.S. history. The post consists entirely of a URL to a Gateway Pundit article arguing that the last time "Democrats" removed a GOP presidential candidate from the ballot was 1860, when Abraham Lincoln's name did not appear on most Southern state ballots. The historical parallel is the post's entire communicative content.

## Authorship Attribution

**High confidence: aide-authored.** Post timestamp converts to 9:38 AM Eastern time at Mar-a-Lago (Trump's established December residence). The complete absence of original text, business-hours timing, and integration into a coordinated same-day media-curation campaign (WSJ, CNN, Fox Business, Gateway Pundit) are all consistent with Scavino-style communications management rather than impulsive authentic Trump posting.

## Psychological Function

Despite aide authorship, the post reflects a team executing a psychologically coherent defensive strategy on behalf of a subject under acute narcissistic injury. Three days post-ruling, the apparatus is still in full damage-control mode. The Lincoln parallel serves a specific intrapsychic function for both Trump and his base:

- **Transforms defeat into destiny**: Lincoln was excluded from Southern ballots in 1860 and won with 180 electoral votes. The implicit narrative: Trump, like Lincoln, will triumph over partisan suppression.
- **Grandiosity restoration**: Comparison to Lincoln rehabilitates the wound of disqualification by reframing it as a mark of historical greatness.
- **Contamination → Redemption reframe**: The Colorado ruling as contamination event (legitimate candidate wrongfully excluded) is immediately reframed as a redemption setup (hero perseveres against unjust opposition).

## Defense Mechanisms

Four mechanisms are operationally layered:

1. **Rationalization** (neurotic): Historical precedent normalizes an unprecedented constitutional ruling, making it seem routine rather than serious.
2. **Projection** (immature): A judicial body (Colorado Supreme Court, appointed under various governors) is relabeled "Democrats," projecting partisan agency onto an institution.
3. **Idealization** (immature): Self-placement in Lincoln's role provides narcissistic supply at a moment of acute vulnerability.
4. **Splitting** (immature): Democrats are cast as consistent historical oppressors of noble Republicans, eliminating complexity.

## Historical Accuracy Assessment

The Lincoln-1860 parallel is **historically misleading in critical ways**:

- Lincoln's name was absent from Southern ballots primarily because the Republican Party had no organizational infrastructure in those states, not because Democrats acted to legally remove him. The situations are structurally different.
- The 14th Amendment Section 3 disqualification is a constitutional legal proceeding; the 1860 ballot absence was a function of party organization and ballot access laws.
- The article's claim that Democrats voted 100% against the 14th Amendment is historically accurate in a narrow sense but weaponizes 19th-century party alignments to smear the modern Democratic Party — a standard "party switch" denial technique.

The parallel thus functions as **historically-flavored gaslighting**: using a real historical event, selectively framed, to distort the meaning of a contemporary legal ruling.

## Gaslighting / Reality Distortion

The URL slug itself ("last-time-democrats-took-gop-candidate-ballot-was") performs an act of misattribution: the Colorado ruling was issued by a **court**, not by "Democrats." This linguistic conflation is not incidental — it systematically trains the audience to perceive the judiciary as a partisan weapon rather than an independent institution. Repeated across many posts and media appearances, this constitutes a sustained DARVO pattern: Trump is cast as victim of Democratic tyranny, the court's legitimate constitutional function is denied, and the attacker (Trump's challenge to the 2020 election) is reframed as the real victim.

## Narrative Identity and Archetype

**Protagonist role**: Persecuted hero in the Lincoln mold — wrongfully excluded, historically vindicated.\\
**Archetypal frame**: Hero/Savior + Victim dyad. The Warrior archetype is muted here (no direct attack language); instead the post invokes the **Martyr-King** — a noble figure whose suffering is the proof of his greatness.\\
**Redemption sequence**: Contamination event (disqualification) → Historical parallel establishes this as the beginning of a redemption arc, not an ending.\\
**Contrasting other**: 1860 Southern Democrats = modern Democrats = permanent enemies of Republican greatness.

## Level 1: Big Five Trait Profile (Inferred from Post + Context)

Given the post is aide-authored, direct trait inference is limited. However, the *strategic choice* of this specific article reflects the subject's underlying psychological needs:

- **Neuroticism (elevated)**: Selection of a historical-vindication narrative three days post-ruling reflects ongoing anxious reactivity to the injury.
- **Agreeableness (low)**: Adversarial framing persists even in historically-themed content.
- **Openness (low)**: Epistemically closed sourcing (Gateway Pundit); ideologically rigid framing.
- **Extraversion (moderate-high)**: Public assertion of counter-narrative, audience engagement.
- **Conscientiousness (moderate)**: Deliberate multi-platform coordinated response.

## Cognitive Assessment

**No original text available for cognitive analysis.** The post cannot be assessed for word-finding difficulty, syntactic complexity, or baseline deviation. Baseline comparisons require original produced language.

## Danger Assessment: **Elevated**

This post falls below "high" danger threshold individually, but contributes to a **cumulative delegitimization pattern** with elevated-level implications:

- Sustained framing of the judiciary as a Democratic partisan weapon erodes institutional trust.
- The Lincoln-1860 analogy implicitly equates modern Democrats with antebellum Southern Democrats — the faction that initiated the Civil War. This historical coding is not accidental in the Gateway Pundit's rhetorical ecosystem.
- No direct violent imagery or explicit target designation in this post, but the broader pattern (judiciary as enemy, historical precedent of national rupture) contributes to an environment where followers may view extralegal resistance as justified.

## Longitudinal Note

This post fits a well-established post-legal-setback pattern: immediate deployment of a media-curation defensive campaign, historical self-comparison to persecuted-but-vindicated figures, and systematic delegitimization of legal processes. The Lincoln comparison specifically is a recurring motif in Trump communications during periods of legal threat, reflecting a stable grandiosity-restoration strategy rather than a new or escalating development.

## Fact Verification

| Claim | Verdict | Evidence |
|-------|---------|----------|
| "The last time Democrats removed a GOP candidate from the ballot was 1860, when Lincoln's name did not appear on most Southern state ballots" | **Half True** | Lincoln's absence from Southern ballots in 1860 is historically accurate — his name did not appear on ballots in most Southern states. However, this was primarily because the Republican Party had no organizational infrastructure in those states, not because Democrats took legal action to remove him. The framing of 'Democrats took him off the ballot' mischaracterizes the mechanism. |
| "100% of Democrats voted against the 14th Amendment when ratified" | **Mostly True** | The 14th Amendment passed on largely party-line votes with negligible Democratic support in 1866-1868. However, weaponizing 19th-century party alignment against the modern Democratic Party ignores the well-documented party realignment of the 20th century. |
| "Colorado Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to challenge Trump's ballot eligibility" | **True** | The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 on December 19, 2023 that Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for engaging in insurrection, removing him from the state's primary ballot. This is confirmed by the known events provided. |

Overall Veracity: 77%

## Authorship Analysis

**Aide-Written** (score: 20%)

### Indicators

- 9:38 AM Eastern local time (Mar-a-Lago, FL) — business hours, not late-night authentic window
- Zero original text; bare URL only
- Fourth post in coordinated same-day media-curation series (WSJ, CNN, Fox Business, Gateway Pundit)
- No signature Trump stylistic markers: no ALL CAPS, no exclamation points, no stream-of-consciousness phrasing

## Psychological Profile

### State

**Mixed State**

**Trigger:** Narcissistic Injury — Defeat (Colorado Supreme Court 14th Amendment disqualification ruling (Dec 19, 2023))

Sentiment: -0.55

### Clinical

**Malignant Narcissism:**
- Narcissistic: 60%
- Antisocial: 20%
- Paranoid: 55%
- Sadism: 0%

**Defense Mechanisms:**
- rationalization (neurotic)
- projection (immature)
- idealization (immature)
- splitting (immature)

**Cognitive Complexity:**
- Complexity: 0%

**Parasocial Techniques:**
- Shared grievance identity construction ('they did this to Lincoln too — and to us')
- Historical validation-seeking: positioning followers as heirs to the Union cause fighting Democratic tyranny

## Danger Assessment

**ELEVATED**

### Indicators

- Sustained judicial delegitimization pattern: framing Colorado Supreme Court as partisan Democratic instrument erodes institutional trust at scale
- Lincoln-1860 analogy implicitly invokes a historical context that ended in armed national rupture — the analogy's endpoint is not merely 'Lincoln won' but 'the other side started a war'
- Gateway Pundit as chosen source signals amplification into an audience ecosystem primed for extralegal grievance responses
- Cumulative effect across same-day posting series: legal system, AG, and now courts all framed as unified Democratic persecution apparatus

### Gaslighting

- URL slug 'Democrats took GOP candidate ballot' misattributes a judicial ruling to a political party
- Lincoln-1860 historical parallel uses real events, selectively framed, to distort the meaning of a constitutional legal proceeding
- Frames the Colorado Supreme Court — an independent judicial body — as an extension of Democratic Party political will
- Implicitly denies the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment disqualification process by coding it as partisan rather than constitutional

## Fact Checks (3)

_The model's verdicts from 2026-03-20._

> The last time Democrats removed a GOP candidate from the ballot was 1860, when Lincoln's name did not appear on most Southern state ballots

**HALF TRUE**

Lincoln's absence from Southern ballots in 1860 is historically accurate — his name did not appear on ballots in most Southern states. However, this was primarily because the Republican Party had no organizational infrastructure in those states, not because Democrats took legal action to remove him. The framing of 'Democrats took him off the ballot' mischaracterizes the mechanism.

Sources: Historical record of 1860 presidential election ballot access

> 100% of Democrats voted against the 14th Amendment when ratified

**MOSTLY TRUE**

The 14th Amendment passed on largely party-line votes with negligible Democratic support in 1866-1868. However, weaponizing 19th-century party alignment against the modern Democratic Party ignores the well-documented party realignment of the 20th century.

Sources: Congressional voting records, 14th Amendment ratification 1866-1868

> Colorado Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to challenge Trump's ballot eligibility

**TRUE**

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 on December 19, 2023 that Trump is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for engaging in insurrection, removing him from the state's primary ballot. This is confirmed by the known events provided.

Sources: Colorado Supreme Court ruling, December 19, 2023

Overall Veracity: 77%

## Tags

- ballot-disqualification-response (95%)
- lincoln-comparison (88%)
- judicial-delegitimization (85%)
- aide-authored (90%)
- historical-gaslighting (82%)
- colorado-ballot-ruling-response (95%)
- gateway-pundit-amplification (75%)
- darvo-pattern (78%)
- redemption-narrative (80%)
- 14th-amendment (88%)

## That day

_From trump.fm's machine-generated digest of the day, not his words._

**Colorado Ruling Aftershock: 48-Post Defensive Barrage Reveals Sustained Narcissistic Injury Response**

Trump spent the day in full reactive mode from Mar-a-Lago, flooding Truth Social with 48 posts -- nearly all responding to the Colorado Supreme Court's ballot disqualification ruling from three days earlier. The posting came in intense bursts: evening campaign-style attacks, a morning wave of curated legal defense articles, and an afternoon blitz of friendly media links mixed with personal grievance posts. His mood swung between defiant confidence when celebrating polls and wounded fury when attacking judges, prosecutors, and rivals by name. The single most alarming moment was a post recycling his "poisoning" immigration metaphor, while a lengthy tirade about the NY fraud case targeted specific officials as enemies. It was one of his highest-volume posting days of the period, driven almost entirely by compounding legal pressure.

Full digest for 2023-12-22: https://trump.fm/date/2023-12-22/analysis

## Citation

- APA: Trump, D. J. (2023, December 22). https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/last-time... [Social media post]. Truth Social. trump.fm. https://trump.fm/post/ts_111624578241644283
- MLA: Trump, Donald J. "https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/last-time-democrats..." Truth Social, 22 Dec. 2023. trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_111624578241644283. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.
- Chicago: Donald J. Trump, "https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/last-time-democrats...," Truth Social, December 22, 2023, archived at trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_111624578241644283.

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