Analysis: The pathetic and dishonest Weekly Standard, run by failed pr...

7y ago Dec 15, 2018 at 4:15 PM

The pathetic and dishonest Weekly Standard, run by failed prognosticator Bill Kristol (who, like many others, never had a clue), is flat broke and out of business. Too bad. May it rest in peace!

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AI Analysis

Machine-generated analysis of the post above on 2026-03-16. Not written by the author of the post.

Danger Level

None

Narcissistic State

Grandiose

Authorship

Self-Written

Intensity

52%

This post functions as a narcissistic triumph display triggered by the impending closure of the Weekly Standard, a primary institutional voice of "Never Trump" conservatism. The clinically notable feature is not the attack itself — negative press coverage of critics is routine — but the register of conspicuous pleasure. The mock-eulogy construction ("May it rest in peace!") is not ironic indifference but ego-syntonic sadism: a public display of enjoyment at an enemy's institutional death. This is consistent with Kernberg's formulation of malignant narcissism's sadistic component, where humiliation of enemies functions as dominance demonstration. The defense mechanism architecture is devaluation-dominant: Kristol is reduced to "failed prognosticator" and the outlet to a product of incompetence, preemptively erasing years of substantive political criticism by reframing its closure as inevitable given the target's inherent inferiority. The parasocial function is notable — followers are invited to share in the pleasure, cementing in-group identity through shared contempt for a common enemy. Authorship leans authentic despite business-hours timing; the gratuitous personal nature of the content, the parenthetical digression, and the sardonic closing flourish are not consistent with aide-drafted communications strategy. The post connects to a same-day broader press-attack post, suggesting a recurring preoccupation with media legitimacy on this date — contextually plausible given the Cohen sentencing and Butina guilty plea creating significant negative coverage pressure.

Authorship Analysis

Self-Written

Indicators:

Sardonic mock-eulogy closing ('May it rest in peace!') is a signature Trump rhetorical flourish
Parenthetical aside '(who, like many others, never had a clue)' reflects stream-of-consciousness digression pattern
Stacked derogatory labels ('pathetic and dishonest') followed by personal attack on named individual — classic Trump ad hominem sequence
11:15 AM EST timestamp falls in business hours, a mild aide indicator, but Saturday morning tweet sessions are documented authentic Trump behavior
No polished event-announcement structure; the post is gratuitous mockery with no operational content, suggesting personal impulse rather than staff communication

Psychological Profile

▶ State

Grandiose State

Trigger: Narcissistic Injury — Criticism (Weekly Standard / Bill Kristol (long-running 'Never Trump' institutional critic))

Sentiment

-0.55

Mildly Hypomanic

Conspicuous pleasure display over enemy's institutional demise — affective intensity slightly disproportionate to the triggering eventPerformative gleeful tone ('Too bad. May it rest in peace!') within context of a day already featuring multiple high-stakes announcements (Mulvaney, Zinke, ACA ruling)

▶ Clinical

Malignant Narcissism:

Narcissistic

82%

Antisocial

38%

Paranoid

25%

Sadism

62%

Defense Mechanisms:

devaluationsplittingrationalization

Cognitive Complexity:

Complexity

42%

Parasocial Techniques:

Mock eulogy invites followers to share in the pleasure of a common enemy's institutional deathValidation of the in-group's long-held dismissal of neoconservative 'Never Trump' media as irrelevantPerformative 'Too bad' signals insider irony — everyone knows he is not sad

Fact Checks (3)

"The Weekly Standard is flat broke and out of business"

Mostly True

The Weekly Standard did cease publication on December 17, 2018, two days after this post. However, the closure was announced by owner Philip Anschutz's Clarity Media Group and involved both financial and editorial disagreements; characterizing it as 'flat broke' oversimplifies a multi-factor ownership decision.

"Bill Kristol is a 'failed prognosticator'"

Half True

Kristol did make prominent incorrect predictions about Trump — notably that Trump would not win the Republican nomination and would not win the presidency (2015-2016). In that narrow sense the characterization has a factual basis. However, Kristol had a long career with many correct analyses; 'failed prognosticator' is selective and hyperbolic.

"Bill Kristol 'never had a clue'"

False

Absolute dismissal unsupported by evidence; Kristol was a prominent political analyst and commentator for decades with demonstrable influence on U.S. foreign policy and conservative thought.

Receipts

No contradictions with other posts detected yet.

Psychological Analysis: December 15, 2018 — Weekly Standard Closure Post

Context and Trigger

The Weekly Standard announced its closure on December 17, 2018; this post precedes the formal shutdown by two days, suggesting Trump was responding to news of the closure decision already circulating publicly. The outlet was a flagship vehicle for "Never Trump" neoconservatism; Bill Kristol was among the most prominent institutional opponents of Trump's candidacy and presidency. The closure removes a persistent source of credentialed conservative criticism.

Trigger classification: Primarily supply-seeking (exploiting enemy's failure for audience validation) with elements of retroactive narcissistic injury repair — the Weekly Standard's years of criticism constituted an ongoing wound; its closure provides opportunity for symbolic reversal.

Level 1: Dispositional Traits

The post is a near-pure expression of low agreeableness (antagonism, contempt) and high extraversion (assertiveness, dominance display). Notably absent: any conscientious, empathic, or communal content. The emotional valence is uncomplicated triumph. Neuroticism is low in this particular post — the grandiose narcissistic state suppresses the anxious/vulnerable register that occasionally surfaces elsewhere.

Level 2: Characteristic Adaptations

Dominant motive: Power/agency (0.90), communion near-zero (0.04). The post contains no relational warmth, no group-belonging signals toward allies, no positive vision — it is entirely oriented toward defeating and humiliating an enemy. This is consistent with the power motive operationalization: controlling outcomes, defeating opponents, having impact.

Schemas activated:

Self: Survivor/winner who outlasts critics; marketplace validator of own worth
Others (critics): Fundamentally incompetent, lacking insight, destined to fail
World: Zero-sum arena where enemies must be defeated and seen to be defeated

Level 3: Narrative Identity

Protagonist role: The enduring winner who survives his enemies' attacks long enough to witness their institutional demise.

Narrative sequence: Redemption. The implicit arc: Weekly Standard criticized Trump (contamination/attack) → Trump won anyway → Weekly Standard is now gone (redemption/vindication). The closure is recruited as retrospective proof that the criticism was never legitimate.

Contrasting other: Bill Kristol serves as the archetypal "failed establishment expert" — credentialed, confident, wrong. This contrast is essential to Trump's identity narrative: he succeeded despite the consensus of the expert class, and the expert class is now being punished by reality.

Identity claims embedded in this post:

"I predicted correctly; they did not"
"I remain; they are gone"
"My critics were always incompetent, not merely wrong"

Level 4: Clinical Analysis

Narcissistic Dynamics

The post illustrates ego-syntonic sadism with unusual clarity. The mock-eulogy ("May it rest in peace!") is the key marker: it borrows the linguistic register of respectful mourning and inverts it, performing grief while communicating pleasure. This is not rhetorical accident — it is a carefully constructed dominance display. Kernberg distinguishes ego-syntonic sadism (pleasure in cruelty experienced as natural/justified) from ego-dystonic sadism (cruelty experienced as alien or troubling). The performative quality here — the public staging of pleasure — is consistent with the ego-syntonic variant.

Narcissistic features activated (high):

Grandiosity: implicit throughout
Contempt: "pathetic," "never had a clue"
Entitlement to mock: no hesitation or qualification
Envy reversal: the formerly prestigious outlet is now "flat broke"

Antisocial features (moderate): Contempt for norms of civil discourse; pleasure in institutional failure; no expressed concern for the journalists employed by the outlet.

Paranoid features (low in this post): The Weekly Standard's closure is factual; the triumphalism is disproportionate but the underlying premise is accurate. No persecution narrative activated here.

Defense Mechanisms

Primary: Devaluation (immature). The mechanism is systematic: Kristol is "failed," the outlet is "pathetic and dishonest," the entire enterprise "never had a clue." This retroactively delegitimizes years of criticism — if Kristol was always incompetent, his criticism of Trump was always meaningless, and Trump was always right to dismiss it. The defense resolves the narcissistic injury of sustained credentialed criticism by reclassifying the critic as never having been credible.

Secondary: Splitting (immature). Binary categorization: Kristol/Weekly Standard = loser/failed/out of business; Trump = winner/survivor. No complexity, no acknowledgment of the outlet's 23-year publishing history or documented influence.

Tertiary: Rationalization (neurotic). Closure is attributed to Kristol's personal incompetence rather than an ownership decision by Clarity Media Group — a simplification that serves the narrative but misrepresents the causal chain.

Rhetorical Architecture

The post is not designed to persuade uncommitted audiences — it is parasocial reward delivery to the existing base. The structure:

Label sequence ("pathetic and dishonest"): validates the base's pre-existing contempt
Personal reduction (Kristol as "failed prognosticator"): reduces institutional criticism to individual failure
Parenthetical generalization ("like many others, never had a clue"): extends dismissal to the entire class of establishment critics
Sardonic closing ("Too bad. May it rest in peace!"): invites shared pleasure, codes the in-group as people who know not to take the sympathy at face value

This is sophisticated audience management even if the content is crude. The post efficiently accomplishes three functions: punishes an enemy, rewards followers, and retroactively validates Trump's judgment.

Authorship Assessment

Confidence: Medium-High for authentic Trump. The 11:15 AM EST Saturday timestamp is ambiguous — business hours, but Saturday. The volume of posts on this date includes clearly aide-drafted material (Mulvaney announcement, Zinke departure). However, those posts have structural markers of staff drafting: formal titles, ellipses for continuation, no ad hominem content. This post has none of those markers and has multiple authentic Trump fingerprints: the parenthetical digression, the stacked derogatory adjectives, the sardonic punchy closing. Gratuitous mockery of an enemy on their institutional deathbed has no communications strategy value and high personal-satisfaction value — consistent with authentic authorship.

Cognitive Status

No markers of concern. The sentence is coherent, the parenthetical correctly embedded, the ironic register executed with apparent intentionality. Complexity is consistent with Trump's documented baseline from this period — short punchy constructions, concrete vocabulary, colloquial register. No word-finding difficulty, perseveration, or tangentiality.

Order/Chaos Dynamics

Positioning: Order attacker (targeting the "establishment" press/intelligentsia) combined with chaos agent (celebrating the destruction of an institutional norm-enforcer). The Weekly Standard represented credentialed conservative intellectual order; its closure is framed as a chaos victory. Asymmetric application: chaos is good when it destroys critics; order is invoked when protecting Trump's own institutional interests.

Archetypal Reading

Primary archetype activated: Warrior/Trickster hybrid. The Warrior defeats the enemy; the Trickster does it with a sardonic smile and a mock eulogy. The post performs the Trickster's signature move: taking the enemy's own legitimizing register (respectful mourning) and weaponizing it as mockery. The effect is to position Trump as both victor and wit — someone who wins and makes it funny.

Shadow projection: Kristol is assigned the role of "the one who never had a clue" — projecting onto the enemy the quality of fundamental confusion/incompetence that Trump's critics most persistently attribute to Trump himself.

Fact Verification

Claim	Verdict	Evidence
"The Weekly Standard is flat broke and out of business"	Mostly True	The Weekly Standard did cease publication on December 17, 2018, two days after this post. However, the closure was announced by owner Philip Anschutz's Clarity Media Group and involved both financial and editorial disagreements; characterizing it as 'flat broke' oversimplifies a multi-factor ownership decision.
"Bill Kristol is a 'failed prognosticator'"	Half True	Kristol did make prominent incorrect predictions about Trump — notably that Trump would not win the Republican nomination and would not win the presidency (2015-2016). In that narrow sense the characterization has a factual basis. However, Kristol had a long career with many correct analyses; 'failed prognosticator' is selective and hyperbolic.
"Bill Kristol 'never had a clue'"	False	Absolute dismissal unsupported by evidence; Kristol was a prominent political analyst and commentator for decades with demonstrable influence on U.S. foreign policy and conservative thought.

Overall Veracity: 43%