# Post x_1039684040901779457

- Post ID: `x_1039684040901779457`
- Platform: X (Twitter)
- Posted: 2018-09-12T01:16:06.000Z (UTC)
- Deleted: no
- Repost: no
- Canonical URL: https://trump.fm/post/x_1039684040901779457
- Analysis page: https://trump.fm/post/x_1039684040901779457/analysis
- Audio narration: https://static.trump.fm/audio/x_1039684040901779457.mp3 (a synthesized voice reading the post text, not a recording)

## Post text

> “You know who’s at fault for this more than anyone else, Comey, because he leaked information and laundered it through a professor at Columbia Law School. Shame on that professor, and shame on Comey. He snuck the information to a law professor who collaborated with him in........

## Engagement

- Likes: 82,077
- Reposts: 21,065
- Replies: 0
- Views: unknown
- Metrics collected: 2026-01-31T23:43:13.397Z (UTC)

# Analysis

_Machine-generated by trump.fm on 2026-03-23T04:01:05.483Z (UTC): a model's reading of this post, not his words. Its psychological terms describe the language, not a clinical assessment of him._

## Summary

Posted at 9:16 PM EDT on September 11, 2018 — the same day Woodward's *Fear* reached #1 — this authentic Trump live-tweet deploys textbook displacement: rather than engaging the proximate threat (Woodward's detailed portrait of White House dysfunction), the post redirects accumulated affect to James Comey, a pre-established villain with practiced audience responses. The mid-sentence trailing ellipsis confirms real-time TV paraphrase, likely Fox News evening coverage. The post's most analytically significant feature is the word "laundered" — a calculated semantic contamination borrowing financial-crime connotations to imply criminality where the legal status of Comey's memo-sharing was contested but not adjudicated as criminal. Combined with "snuck," the vocabulary constructs Comey as a covert institutional saboteur. The paranoid schema is consistent with sustained deep-state ideation across this period: routine professional contact (Comey sharing notes with a longtime friend) is reframed as conspiratorial network coordination. Public "Shame on" condemnation directed at a named private citizen (Richman) before a multi-million-person audience represents a social-sanction mechanism with potentially serious real-world consequences for the target. No cognitive deviation from baseline; no danger indicators. Post is clinically noteworthy primarily for its displacement mechanism relative to the Woodward book release and for the paranoid elaboration of ordinary professional contact into covert criminal conspiracy.

## Authorship Attribution

**Timing Analysis:** UTC 01:16:06 on September 12 converts to **21:16 EDT (9:16 PM)** on September 11, 2018. On 9/11 itself, Trump was almost certainly in Washington, D.C. (the preceding post is a 9/11 memorial tweet, and White House ceremonies were held that day). This is an evening post — after typical staff hours but not yet the deep-night window most associated with impulsive authentic posting.

**Stylistic Indicators — Strongly Authentic:**
- **Mid-sentence truncation ("........")** is a near-definitive artifact of live-tweeting television. Trump appears to have been paraphrasing or quoting a Fox News pundit mid-commentary when he hit the character limit or lost the thread. Aides do not produce trailing-ellipsis fragments.
- **"He snuck"** — non-standard informal past tense ("sneaked" being grammatically correct); highly consistent with Trump's oral register, inconsistent with aide drafting.
- **"You know who's at fault..."** — second-person address mimicking a broadcast pundit being heard in real time.
- **Ritualistic "Shame on... Shame on..."** repetition — formulaic moral denunciation pattern appearing in multiple authenticated Trump posts.
- No hyperlink, no event announcement, no scheduling function; post serves no staff utility.

**Confidence: High** — authentic Trump, live-tweeting Fox News evening coverage on 9/11.

---

## Contextual Frame

The post arrives on the same day Bob Woodward's *Fear* was officially released (#1 bestseller, broadly covered). The book detailed staff members hiding documents from Trump and widespread internal concerns about presidential fitness. Rather than addressing *Fear* directly, Trump redirects to a chronic grievance — Comey's memo-sharing — suggesting motivated displacement. The Comey target is psychologically safer: older injury, pre-established villain role, no new revelations.

The factual substrate is real: Comey did share memos with Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, who conveyed them to the *New York Times* in 2017. The legal and ethical characterization, however, is significantly inflated by Trump's framing.

---

## Multi-Level Personality Analysis

### Level 1: Dispositional Traits
- **Low Agreeableness:** Frontal accusatory address, public shaming of named individuals.
- **High Neuroticism (angry hostility facet):** Emotional reactivity directed at a chronic grievance figure on a day of peak environmental threat (Woodward book).
- **Low Conscientiousness:** Mid-sentence fragment, no editorial polish.
- **Low Openness:** Morally absolute framing ("Shame on"), no ambiguity tolerated.
- **Moderate Extraversion:** Assertive, dominant tone; public performance of outrage.

### Level 2: Characteristic Adaptations
- **Agency motive — dominant:** The post is fundamentally about control of narrative and institutional power. Comey represents an agent who exercised autonomous institutional power against the subject.
- **Communion motive — absent:** No warmth, no group solidarity construction.
- **Schema of others:** Institutions and their agents are treacherous, self-interested, and operating through covert channels ("snuck," "laundered," "collaborated").

### Level 3: Narrative Identity
- **Protagonist role:** Righteous exposer of institutional corruption; the one who *sees* what others miss.
- **Contamination sequence:** Comey had institutional authority → betrayed it through stealth and deception → corrupted the rule of law.
- **Identity claim:** "I am the target of systematic institutional betrayal."
- **Contrasting other:** Comey as the stealthy insider who weaponized process against the subject; "that professor" as complicit enabler.

### Level 4: Clinical Indicators

**Malignant Narcissism Components:**

*Narcissistic Features (moderate, 0.50):* No direct self-aggrandizement, but implicit positioning as the righteous victim wronged by institutional actors. Entitlement subtext: the act of Comey sharing memos is treated as an affront demanding public shaming.

*Antisocial Features (low-moderate, 0.30):* Repeated lying and disregard for others' rights are not primary in this post, though the inflated characterization of memo-sharing as criminal "laundering" has a deceptive quality.

*Paranoid Features (moderate-high, 0.60):* Preoccupation with information leaks, covert collaboration ("collaborated"), and institutional treachery is consistent with sustained paranoid ideation. The framing of routine professional contact (professor friend) as a conspiratorial network is a paranoid elaboration.

*Ego-Syntonic Sadism (low-moderate, 0.30):* The "Shame on" construction is a public humiliation instrument — calling shame down on named individuals before an audience of millions. Pleasure in denunciation is discernible but not the dominant feature.

---

## Defense Mechanisms

1. **Displacement (neurotic):** On the day *Fear* dropped — the most direct, credible threat to Trump's self-image — the post targets Comey instead. The affect (outrage at exposure) is redirected from Woodward to a pre-established target where the subject has practiced responses and expects audience agreement.

2. **Projection (immature):** Trump imputes secretive, deceptive behavior ("snuck," "laundered") to Comey while simultaneously being depicted in the Woodward book as the subject of extensive document removal and institutional circumvention by his own staff. The disowned quality (exposure through covert information channels) is attributed to the enemy.

3. **Rationalization (neurotic):** "Laundered" applies financial-crime vocabulary to information sharing, retrofitting a pseudo-legal frame that makes the act *sound* criminal to an audience unfamiliar with the actual legal status of Comey's memos.

---

## Rhetorical Analysis

- **"Laundered":** Deliberate semantic contamination — borrowing money-laundering connotations to imply criminal intent where the legal status of Comey's memos was contested but not clearly criminal. Effective propaganda technique: audience hears "crime" without a provable false statement.
- **"Snuck":** Connotation of shame, stealth, and dishonesty; the word choice does rhetorical work beyond the denotative meaning.
- **"Shame on... Shame on...":** Ritualistic repetition; functions as a crowd-directed condemnation ceremony. The doubled structure implies two separate moral transgressions of equal weight.
- **Second-person opening ("You know who..."):** Mimics broadcast pundit address; creates parasocial intimacy and implies the audience is being let in on a secret the mainstream refuses to acknowledge.
- **Trailing ellipsis ("........"):** Inadvertent but rhetorically effective — creates an open loop, inviting the audience to complete the thought, increasing engagement.

**Propaganda Techniques:** Ad hominem, appeal to shame (social sanction mechanism), pseudo-legal vocabulary insertion, and RAND Firehose volume contribution (part of sustained high-frequency reality-distortion output).

---

## Gaslighting and Reality Distortion

Mild but present. Characterizing Comey's memo-sharing as "laundering" distorts a legally contested act (sharing personal notes with a friend who contacted media) into apparent financial-crime-adjacent wrongdoing. "Shame on that professor" also performs a distortion: the professor (Richman) was a private citizen and longtime Comey friend acting as an intermediary, not an institutional actor; attaching "shame" to him implies a moral equivalence that requires accepting the inflated framing.

---

## Cognitive Status

No significant deviation from established baseline. The mid-sentence truncation is environmental (character limit during live-tweeting) rather than cognitive. Vocabulary is within Trump's documented range. Syntax, while informal, is coherent. The post shows characteristic oral-register patterns ("You know who's at fault," "He snuck") consistent with Trump's verified earlier speech samples. No word-finding difficulties, no temporal confusion, no semantic paraphasias identifiable.

---

## Danger Assessment

**Level: None.** The target is a named public figure (former FBI director) and is attacked with moral/reputational language. No eliminationist framing, no mobilization language, no violent imagery. The "shame" mechanism is a social sanction tool, not an incitement structure.

---

## Fact Verification

| Claim | Verdict | Evidence |
|-------|---------|----------|
| "Comey leaked information and laundered it through a professor at Columbia Law School" | **Mostly True** | Comey admitted sharing memos with Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, who conveyed them to the New York Times. The factual core is accurate. 'Leaked' is contested (Comey maintained these were personal notes, not classified at time of sharing; some later retroactively classified). 'Laundered' is an inflammatory characterization with no legal basis. |
| "He snuck the information to a law professor who collaborated with him" | **Half True** | Richman confirmed acting as Comey's intermediary. The arrangement was not publicly disclosed at the time. However, 'snuck' implies covert wrongdoing and shameful intent; no court found this arrangement illegal. |

Overall Veracity: 65%

## Authorship Analysis

**Self-Written** (score: 87%)

### Indicators

- Mid-sentence truncation with '........' — definitive live-tweeting artifact, incompatible with aide drafting
- Non-standard past tense 'He snuck' (vs 'sneaked') — oral register characteristic of authenticated Trump posts
- Second-person broadcast-mimicking opener ('You know who's at fault...') consistent with real-time TV paraphrase
- Doubled 'Shame on... Shame on...' ritual denunciation pattern appears in multiple authenticated posts
- No URL, no event function, no scheduling utility — no staff purpose served

## Psychological Profile

### State

**Mixed State**

**Trigger:** Narcissistic Injury — Exposure (Woodward Fear book release + ongoing Comey/FBI narrative)

**Rage:** Intensity 55% targeting James Comey and Daniel Richman
- Proportionality: 40%

Sentiment: -0.72

### Clinical

**Malignant Narcissism:**
- Narcissistic: 50%
- Antisocial: 30%
- Paranoid: 60%
- Sadism: 30%

**Defense Mechanisms:**
- displacement (neurotic)
- projection (immature)
- rationalization (neurotic)

**Cognitive Complexity:**
- Complexity: 38%

**Parasocial Techniques:**
- Second-person broadcast-mimicking address ('You know who's at fault...')
- Public shame ceremony inviting audience to witness denunciation
- Trailing ellipsis creates open loop inviting audience completion

## Danger Assessment

**NONE**

### Gaslighting

- 'Laundered' applies financial-crime vocabulary to legally contested but not criminal memo-sharing, distorting the act into apparent criminality
- 'Shame on that professor' attaches moral equivalence to a private citizen acting as a personal intermediary, requiring acceptance of the inflated 'laundering' frame to make sense

## Fact Checks (2)

_The model's verdicts from 2026-03-23._

> Comey leaked information and laundered it through a professor at Columbia Law School

**MOSTLY TRUE**

Comey admitted sharing memos with Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, who conveyed them to the New York Times. The factual core is accurate. 'Leaked' is contested (Comey maintained these were personal notes, not classified at time of sharing; some later retroactively classified). 'Laundered' is an inflammatory characterization with no legal basis.

Sources: Comey congressional testimony 2017; NYT reporting on Richman intermediary role

> He snuck the information to a law professor who collaborated with him

**HALF TRUE**

Richman confirmed acting as Comey's intermediary. The arrangement was not publicly disclosed at the time. However, 'snuck' implies covert wrongdoing and shameful intent; no court found this arrangement illegal.

Sources: Daniel Richman confirmation to NYT, 2017

Overall Veracity: 65%

## Tags

- displacement (85%)
- projection (70%)
- paranoid_ideation (65%)
- comey_grievance (90%)
- live_tweeting (90%)
- semantic_contamination (80%)
- public_shame_ceremony (75%)
- woodward_deflection (80%)
- deep_state_schema (70%)

## That day

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

**Two Fronts: Woodward's *Fear* and Florence's Fury Produce a Day of Defensive Oscillation**

Trump spent the day toggling between two tracks: defending himself against the fallout from Bob Woodward's book release and playing the role of hurricane-ready commander-in-chief as Florence bore down on the East Coast. The evening before and early morning brought a burst of anger directed at Comey, Maxine Waters, and the Mueller investigation, with multiple posts quoting Fox News allies to assert his innocence. He also relitigated the Puerto Rico hurricane response, calling it an "unappreciated great job" while blaming the mayor of San Juan. By afternoon, the political attacks subsided and he settled into a calmer presidential mode, closing the night at a Medal of Honor reception.

Full digest for 2018-09-12: https://trump.fm/date/2018-09-12/analysis

## Citation

- APA: Trump, D. J. (2018, September 12). “You know who’s at fault for this more than... [Social media post]. X (Twitter). trump.fm. https://trump.fm/post/x_1039684040901779457
- MLA: Trump, Donald J. "“You know who’s at fault for this more than anyone else,..." X (Twitter), 12 Sep. 2018. trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/x_1039684040901779457. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.
- Chicago: Donald J. Trump, "“You know who’s at fault for this more than anyone else,...," X (Twitter), September 12, 2018, archived at trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/x_1039684040901779457.

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