Analysis: Amazing! AG Schneiderman sues a school w/ a 98% approval rat...

13y ago Aug 26, 2013 at 2:28 PM

Amazing! AG Schneiderman sues a school w/ a 98% approval rating but doesn’t go after billion $ fraudsters all over Wall St.

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AI Analysis

Machine-generated analysis of the post above on 2026-02-25. Not written by the author of the post.

Danger Level

None

Narcissistic State

Grandiose

Authorship

Self-Written

Intensity

62%

This post is one of five published in a single day targeting AG Schneiderman, triggered by his $40 million fraud lawsuit against Trump University filed 48 hours prior. The "school" is never named — a strategic depersonalization preserving deniability and framing the subject as objective observer rather than defendant. The "98% approval rating," derived from in-session surveys before students could evaluate real outcomes, is weaponized to supplant the fraud narrative with a counter-narrative of excellence; it is contradicted by a 32% refund rate and a BBB D-minus rating contemporaneous with this post. The whataboutism Wall Street redirect simultaneously deflects from Trump's legal exposure and activates post-2008 populist grievance, repositioning a billionaire defendant as an ally of ordinary Americans — while Schneiderman was actively litigating against Bank of America and Wells Fargo for RMBS fraud as of May 2013. Psychologically, this is a prototypical narcissistic injury response: a public legal challenge to a Trump-branded entity activates immediate counterattack on the attacker's competence and motives with no engagement with the underlying merits. Defense mechanisms include projection (displacing "fraudster" label onto Wall Street while accused of fraud), rationalization (approval rating as lawsuit rebuttal), and displacement (redirecting aggression to AG's institutional failures). The five-tweet cluster on one target in one day indicates acute perseveration on the injury. The integrated media-amplification loop (Fox and Friends + Twitter cluster) documents a fully developed injury-response strategy that will recur across all subsequent legal challenges.

Authorship Analysis

Self-Written

Indicators:

Exclamatory 'Amazing!' opener consistent with authenticated personal Trump tweets
Abbreviation style ('w/') and inline dollar sign match authentic tweet register
Companion same-day tweet contains Trump typo 'Schneidean' confirming personal Twitter access that morning
Subject explicitly states in companion tweet that he 'enjoyed doing the show circuit this AM' about Schneiderman — emotionally activated and engaged
Business hours timing (10:28 AM EDT) introduces mild uncertainty suggesting possible aide polish

Psychological Profile

▶ State

Grandiose State

Trigger: Narcissistic Injury — Criticism (AG Schneiderman's $40M civil fraud lawsuit against Trump University, filed August 24, 2013 — 48 hours before this post)

Rage: Intensity 62% targeting AG Eric Schneiderman

Proportionality

28%

Sentiment

-0.58

Mildly Hypomanic

Five tweets targeting same individual published within a single dayExclamatory opener ('Amazing!') and sustained assertive-expansive register across the tweet clusterHigh-energy integrated media circuit (Fox and Friends appearance + multi-platform Twitter campaign) on same morningCombative tone maintained despite significant legal jeopardy — minimal inhibition from pending litigation

▶ Clinical

Malignant Narcissism:

Narcissistic

72%

Antisocial

35%

Paranoid

65%

Sadism

15%

Defense Mechanisms:

projectionrationalizationdisplacement

Cognitive Complexity:

Complexity

35%

Parasocial Techniques:

Populist Wall Street invocation aligns billionaire defendant with post-2008 populist grievance, building shared enemy with audiencePerformative indignation ('Amazing!') recruits followers into shared outrage before any evidence is presentedDARVO structure positions followers as witnesses to selective institutional injustice

Danger Assessment

None

Gaslighting Detected:

Reframes an active $40M fraud lawsuit as persecution of an excellent institution, without engaging a single substantive allegation in the complaint
Cites disputed 98% approval statistic as definitive institutional quality indicator while suppressing contrary evidence (32% refund rate, BBB D-minus rating)
Characterizes AG's targeting as misdirected without acknowledging the specific legal basis for the lawsuit
Inverts victim-offender framing: defendant becomes concerned observer; AG becomes enabler of real wrongdoing

Reality Distortions:

'98% approval rating' presented as definitive quality indicator; derived from in-session surveys with non-anonymous administration before outcome assessment was possible; contradicted by 32% refund rate and contemporaneous BBB D-minus rating
Schneiderman characterized as ignoring Wall Street fraud when he had announced lawsuits against Bank of America and Wells Fargo for RMBS fraud just three months prior and was actively co-chairing the federal-state RMBS Working Group

Fact Checks (2)

"AG Schneiderman sues a school with a 98% approval rating"

Half True

Schneiderman did file a $40M civil fraud lawsuit against Trump University on August 24, 2013 — the 'school' component is factually accurate. However, the '98% approval rating' derives from in-session surveys administered while students still anticipated future program benefits, before any outcome evaluation was possible. Approximately 32% of three-day program attendees demanded refunds — arithmetically irreconcilable with 98% satisfaction. The BBB had rated Trump University D-minus based on complaint volume contemporaneous with this post. The statistic technically existed but its derivation makes it a profoundly misleading quality indicator.

"Schneiderman doesn't go after billion dollar fraudsters all over Wall Street"

Mostly False

Schneiderman co-chaired the federal-state Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group and in May 2013 — three months before this post — announced lawsuits against Bank of America and Wells Fargo for RMBS fraud. He had previously subpoenaed 11 major financial institutions. The claim that he was ignoring Wall Street financial fraud is directly contradicted by his documented contemporaneous actions, though critics noted the task force's overall effectiveness was limited.

Receipts

No contradictions with other posts detected yet.

Contextual Foundation

This post is the fourth identifiable in a cluster of at least five tweets published on August 26, 2013, all targeting New York AG Eric Schneiderman. The trigger is unambiguous: Schneiderman filed a $40 million civil fraud lawsuit against Trump University on August 24, 2013 — just 48 hours before this post. A companion tweet that same day confirms Trump had just completed a "show circuit this AM discussing lightweight AG Eric Schneiderman," establishing a high-activation, media-amplified retaliatory state.

The "school" is Trump University (later renamed Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC). Trump never names it — a strategic depersonalization that serves dual functions: preserving plausible deniability and framing himself as an objective observer of injustice rather than the named defendant.

Level 1: Dispositional Traits (Big Five)

Most salient in this post:

Low Agreeableness: Combative attack on a public official; zero acknowledgment of the lawsuit's merits or the AG's legal standing
High Extraversion / Assertiveness: Publicly broadcasting counterattack mid-media-blitz; assertive, expansive register
Elevated Neuroticism (Angry Hostility): Five same-day posts targeting a single individual signal acute dysregulated affect
Low Conscientiousness (Deliberation): Reactive cluster posting; no apparent strategic restraint or factual verification
Low Openness (Values Rigidity): Admits no complexity in Schneiderman's position; black-and-white framing throughout — the AG is simply wrong, the school is simply excellent

Level 2: Characteristic Adaptations

Dominant motive: Power and Status Restoration. The lawsuit directly attacks a Trump-branded entity. The response is not engagement with the legal merits but immediate repositioning of the aggressor as the true incompetent, restoring the subject's superiority schema.

Schemas revealed:

Self: Creator of highly-approved, excellent institutions; unfairly persecuted by politically motivated actors
Schneiderman: Incompetent/corrupt; using prosecutorial power for selective targeting rather than genuine justice
World: Genuine criminals (Wall Street "fraudsters") operate with impunity while successful builders are prosecuted
Legal process: An instrument of political power, not justice — legitimacy derived from who wields it, not the law itself

Level 3: Narrative Identity

Protagonist role: Aggrieved defender of institutional excellence; observer of selective injustice
Contamination sequence: An institution with overwhelming public approval → targeted by a corrupt, misdirected AG → grievance narrative for public consumption
Identity claims: "I build things that work" (98% approval); "I see injustice others ignore" (Wall St.); "I am a fighter, not a fraud"
Contrasting other: Schneiderman as politically motivated, negligent prosecutor who ignores powerful financial interests while targeting successful entrepreneurs
Redemption arc seeding: The multi-tweet/multi-media campaign frames this legal battle as a story Trump intends to win in the court of public opinion, regardless of judicial outcome

Level 4: Clinical Indicators

Narcissistic Injury Response

Schneiderman's lawsuit is a textbook narcissistic injury trigger: a formal, public challenge by an authority figure to the legitimacy and value of a Trump-branded creation. The response follows the characteristic pattern — no engagement with the substance, but immediate assault on the attacker's credibility, competence, and motives. The "Amazing!" opener is performative indignation: it signals absurdity to followers before a single fact is presented, pre-framing all that follows as self-evidently unjust.

DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)

The post executes a compact DARVO structure:

Deny: Implicitly denies wrongdoing by leading with the institution's alleged 98% approval rating
Attack: Challenges Schneiderman's judgment, priorities, and institutional integrity
Reverse: Trump (the named defendant) becomes an objective bystander noting injustice; Schneiderman (the AG) becomes the party enabling "billion $ fraudsters"

Projection

The term "fraudsters" — precisely the label applied to Trump University in the AG's complaint — is displaced onto Wall Street actors. The subject does not engage with the fraud allegations against himself; he locates fraud elsewhere, on a target that is both legally safer and politically more resonant. This is a textbook immature defense: disowning an unacceptable designation by attributing it to another party.

Paranoid Features

The framing of Schneiderman as selectively persecuting an excellent institution while ignoring genuine criminals is consistent with a paranoid schema: the conviction that one is being specifically singled out for persecution while real wrongdoers operate with impunity. The absence of any consideration of legitimate prosecutorial grounds underscores the persecutory framing.

Authorship Attribution

Local time (EDT, UTC-4, August, New York): 10:28 AM — business hours, which in isolation would favor aide authorship. Multiple factors, however, support authentic Trump at medium-high confidence (~72%):

Trump explicitly states in a companion tweet that he "enjoyed doing the show circuit this AM" about Schneiderman — emotionally activated and publicly engaged on this exact topic
A same-day companion tweet contains a clear Trump typo: "Schneidean" for "Schneiderman" — confirming personal Twitter access that morning
The exclamatory "Amazing!" opener is a characteristic authentic Trump stylistic marker appearing across verified personal tweets
"w/" abbreviation and dollar sign mid-sentence match his authentic tweet register
The Wall Street populism, while calculated, reflects a persistent Trump rhetorical reflex appearing across hundreds of authenticated posts

The relatively controlled grammatical structure (vs. stream-of-consciousness) introduces marginal uncertainty — this may be authentic Trump with light aide polish. Assessment: medium confidence, authentic (score 0.72 on 0=aide → 1=Trump axis).

Rhetorical Analysis

The post deploys three primary moves:

Performative indignation ("Amazing!"): Frame-setter that recruits followers into shared outrage before a single fact is presented; signals absurdity rather than substantiating it
Statistical appeal ("98% approval rating"): Weaponizes a survey-derived, methodologically contested metric to supplant the fraud narrative with a counter-narrative of excellence
Whataboutism (Wall Street redirect): Shifts the burden entirely from Trump's conduct to the AG's prosecution priorities while activating genuine post-2008 populist grievance

The Wall Street invocation is a rhetorical sleight of hand: it repositions a billionaire defendant as ally of Main Street Americans against financial elites — a parasocial technique that trades on genuine public grievance while serving the subject's personal legal defense. The institutional depersonalization ("a school") obscures that the subject is a directly interested party, not a concerned citizen.

Fact Verification

Claim	Verdict	Evidence
"AG Schneiderman sues a school with a 98% approval rating"	Half True	Schneiderman did file a $40M civil fraud lawsuit against Trump University on August 24, 2013 — the 'school' component is factually accurate. However, the '98% approval rating' derives from in-session surveys administered while students still anticipated future program benefits, before any outcome evaluation was possible. Approximately 32% of three-day program attendees demanded refunds — arithmetically irreconcilable with 98% satisfaction. The BBB had rated Trump University D-minus based on complaint volume contemporaneous with this post. The statistic technically existed but its derivation makes it a profoundly misleading quality indicator.
"Schneiderman doesn't go after billion dollar fraudsters all over Wall Street"	Mostly False	Schneiderman co-chaired the federal-state Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group and in May 2013 — three months before this post — announced lawsuits against Bank of America and Wells Fargo for RMBS fraud. He had previously subpoenaed 11 major financial institutions. The claim that he was ignoring Wall Street financial fraud is directly contradicted by his documented contemporaneous actions, though critics noted the task force's overall effectiveness was limited.

Overall Veracity: 35%