# Post x_375660569581613060 - Post ID: `x_375660569581613060` - Platform: X (Twitter) - Posted: 2013-09-05T20:43:53.000Z (UTC) - Deleted: no - Repost: no - Canonical URL: https://trump.fm/post/x_375660569581613060 - Analysis page: https://trump.fm/post/x_375660569581613060/analysis - Audio narration: https://static.trump.fm/audio/x_375660569581613060.mp3 (a synthesized voice reading the post text, not a recording) ## Post text > If President Obama was going to attack Syria, he should’ve done it a long time ago as a surprise &, not after (cont) http://t.co/dvzmCu76uv ## Engagement - Likes: 0 - Reposts: 106 - Replies: 0 - Views: unknown - Metrics collected: 2026-02-01T01:33:24.899Z (UTC) # Analysis _Machine-generated by trump.fm on 2026-02-26T05:41:35.841Z (UTC): a model's reading of this post, not his words. Its psychological terms describe the language, not a clinical assessment of him._ ## Summary One of approximately six to eight Syria-related posts Trump made on September 5, 2013 — alongside a personal grief post for his executive assistant — this entry represents the cooler, strategic register of a day marked by high emotional arousal. Trump, 67, a private real estate developer with no military credentials, leverages the Obama administration's Syria deliberations to perform tactical expertise: action should have been executed earlier as a surprise, not publicly telegraphed. The argument is defensible as doctrine; its psychological significance lies not in the substance but in the total confidence with which it is delivered — no hedge, no credential acknowledgment, no epistemic humility. Defense mechanisms include rationalization (wrapping political criticism in military strategy framing) and devaluation (Obama as implicit incompetent). Narcissistic state is grandiose; the trigger is supply-seeking, not injury. Authorship is medium-confidence (~63%) authentic Trump, offset by the 4:43 PM EDT business-hours timestamp. Most consequentially for longitudinal analysis, this post established a direct self-contradiction: in April 2018, President Trump tweeted "Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart!'" before Syria strikes — precisely the pre-announcement behavior he condemned here repeatedly in 2013. His own formulation from September 1, 2013 — "We have given Syria so much time and information — there has never been such an instance in wartime history" — became a widely circulated rebuke of his own presidential conduct. # Psychological Analysis: Trump on Syria Timing (September 5, 2013) ## Post & Context This truncated tweet — one of roughly six to eight posts Trump made on September 5, 2013, the day the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to authorize limited Syrian military action — occupies the *measured, strategic* register of a day also marked by an emotionally volcanic all-caps companion post ("AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA…"). The `(cont)` suffix and t.co URL indicate use of TwitLonger or a similar 140-character overflow tool, a common Trump practice in the early Twitter era. The linked URL is now dead. The `&,` encoding artifact appears identically in the companion all-caps post, confirming a systematic platform/archival rendering issue rather than a compositional error by Trump. Based on the August 29, 2013 companion tweet ("No, dopey, I would not go into Syria, but if I did it would be by surprise and not blurted all over the media like fools"), the truncated continuation almost certainly elaborated on the strategic folly of telegraphing military intentions — the Obama administration had made the "red line" publicly in August 2012, publicly debated intervention for weeks, and on August 31, 2013, announced Congressional authorization would be sought, all in full view of adversaries. --- ## Authorship Attribution **Local time**: UTC 20:43:53 → **4:43 PM EDT** (Trump Tower, Manhattan — his primary residence through 2019). This is solidly mid-afternoon business hours, the weakest window for authentic Trump authorship. Factors pushing *toward* authentic Trump, however, are strong: the day shows extraordinary personal engagement (six-plus Syria tweets plus a personal grief post about Norma Foerderer); the TwitLonger continuation format was a Trump personal practice; the same `&,` encoding artifact appears in the companion all-caps tweet of the same day, suggesting the same posting mechanism; and the "I know better than the President" rhetorical posture is quintessentially Trumpian. **Confidence: medium.** Estimated 60–65% authentic Trump. --- ## Multi-Level Personality Analysis ### Level 1: Dispositional Traits (Big Five) This post foregrounds **low Agreeableness** (contemptuous expert critique of Obama without a shred of acknowledged credential gap), **high Extraversion** (assertive, audience-directed, one of many posts in a rapid-fire sequence), and **low Openness** (rigid binary framing: either don't do it, or do it exactly right; no acknowledgment of strategic complexity). Conscientiousness is ambiguous — the conditional syntax shows some deliberation, but this is belied by the high impulsive-posting volume. Neuroticism is elevated at the day level (all-caps companion post) but modulated in this specific tweet. ### Level 2: Characteristic Adaptations **Agency motives dominate entirely.** Power (framing as superior to POTUS), status (public advisor to the President), and control (dictating what should have been done) are the operative motives. Communion motives are absent. The underlying **schema** is: *I see clearly, they do not; my judgment is superior; the world would benefit from my authority.* This is not a momentary posture — it is the consistent schema across the entire day's Syria tweet sequence. ### Level 3: Narrative Identity - **Protagonist role**: Strategic expert dispensing superior wisdom to a failing leader; the competent outsider the establishment refused to listen to. - **Contamination sequence**: *There was a strategic opportunity to handle Syria correctly (surprise strike) → it was contaminated by Obama's incompetence and public telegraphing.* - **Identity claims**: "I understand military strategy"; "I would do this differently and better." - **Contrasting other**: Obama as "foolish leader" — the negative foil whose failures implicitly establish Trump's virtues. ### Level 4: Clinical Indicators **Narcissistic features (moderate, 0.55)**: The grandiosity in this post is the intellectual variety — a private citizen with zero military credentials dispensing tactical doctrine to the President with total confidence. No epistemic hedging ("in my view," "perhaps," "though I'm not a strategist"). The entitlement to issue military advice is assumed rather than claimed. **Antisocial features (low, 0.25)**: Contemptuous disregard for others' perspectives, but nothing threatening or rule-violating. **Paranoid features (minimal, 0.1)**: Not present in this specific post (more salient in the "we get NOTHING" companion tweet). **Ego-syntonic sadism (low, 0.15)**: Mild relish in Obama's predicament but no overt cruelty. --- ## Narcissistic Dynamics **Trigger**: External political event functioning as a **supply-seeking opportunity** — using the Syria crisis and media saturation to position himself as the person who knows best. No narcissistic injury (no one criticized Trump here). This is opportunistic expertise performance. **State**: **Grandiose.** He is not defending himself; he is lecturing from a position of assumed superiority. **Rage**: Absent in this specific post. The day's rage was deposited in the all-caps tweet; this tweet represents the cooler "analytical" affect. --- ## Defense Mechanisms 1. **Rationalization (neurotic)**: Anti-intervention position framed in tactical terms ("should've done it as a surprise") that disguise the underlying political calculation as strategic wisdom. 2. **Devaluation (immature)**: Obama consistently constructed as the incompetent foil — explicit in the companion tweet ("VERY FOOLISH LEADER"), implicit in the conditional framing here. 3. **Displacement (neurotic)**: The humanitarian and geopolitical substance of the Syria question (civilian casualties, regional stability, international law) is displaced entirely by the personal-competence critique of Obama's decision-making process. --- ## Rhetorical Analysis The conditional structure ("If President Obama was going to attack Syria, he should've done it…") is rhetorically sophisticated: it avoids categorical pacifism while still criticizing Obama, and it is harder to rebut than a simple "don't do it" (you can't disprove that surprise would have worked better). The "surprise" argument also has genuine military-strategic grounding — operational security is real doctrine — lending the post a veneer of credibility that the all-caps companion tweet lacks entirely. **Self-Contradiction Established**: This post, combined with the August 29, 2013 tweet ("No, dopey, I would not go into Syria, but if I did it would be by surprise and not blurted all over the media like fools"), set up one of the most extensively documented self-contradictions of Trump's political career. In April 2018, President Trump tweeted "Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart!'" — telegraphing Syria missile strikes hours before they occurred. Congressional Democrats and media widely circulated his 2013 posts. Trump's own 2013 line — "We have given Syria so much time and information — there has never been such an instance in wartime history" (September 1, 2013) — applied precisely to his own 2018 behavior. --- ## Cognitive Status Within normal range for 2013 baseline. The conditional sentence structure and past-perfect modal ("should've done") reflect standard syntactic complexity for Trump's political commentary Twitter style in this period. No word-finding difficulties, tangentiality, or paraphasia detected. The `&,` artifact is archival/platform encoding, not a language production error. The TwitLonger format indicates the complete thought was more developed. **Baseline deviation: none.** --- ## Danger Assessment **None.** The post is directed at Obama's foreign policy competence. No domestic targets, no dehumanizing language, no eliminationist framing, no mobilization calls. --- ## Summary One of approximately six to eight Syria-related posts Trump made on September 5, 2013 — alongside a grief tweet for his executive assistant — this entry represents the cooler, strategic register of a day marked by high emotional arousal. Trump, 67, a private real estate developer with no military credentials, leverages the Obama administration's Syria deliberations to perform tactical expertise, arguing that action should have been executed as a surprise rather than publicly telegraphed. The argument is defensible as doctrine; its psychological significance lies not in the substance but in the *total confidence with which it is delivered*: no hedge, no credential acknowledgment, no epistemic humility. Defense mechanisms include rationalization (wrapping political criticism in military strategy framing) and devaluation (Obama as implicit incompetent). Narcissistic state is grandiose; the trigger is supply-seeking, not injury. Authorship is estimated at 60–65% authentic Trump. Most consequentially, this post established a self-contradiction directly weaponized against Trump in 2018 when, as President, he tweeted advance warning of Syria missile strikes — enacting the exact telegraphing behavior he had spent weeks in 2013 condemning. ## Fact Verification | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |-------|---------|----------| | "If Obama was going to attack Syria, he should've done it as a surprise, not after public announcement" | **Mostly True** | Obama made the 'red line' statement publicly in August 2012; debated Syrian intervention for weeks in public; announced on August 31, 2013 he would seek Congressional authorization; Secretary Kerry testified publicly before the Senate on September 5 urging authorization. The element of operational surprise was substantially compromised. That said, whether a surprise strike was strategically or legally feasible, or would have produced better outcomes, is a judgment call beyond factual verification. | Overall Veracity: 80% ## Authorship Analysis **Uncertain** (score: 63%) ### Indicators - High tweet volume on Syria that day (6+ posts) indicates strong personal investment - Same &, encoding artifact appears in companion all-caps tweet of same day, suggesting identical posting mechanism - Conditional 'I know better than the President' framing is quintessentially authentic Trump voice - TwitLonger continuation format was a common Trump personal practice in this period - Post-time of 4:43 PM EDT (business hours) marginally favors aide involvement ## Psychological Profile ### State **Grandiose State** **Trigger:** Supply Seeking (Obama Syria policy debate, G20 summit coverage, Senate authorization vote) Sentiment: -0.45 **Mildly Hypomanic** - Approximately 6-8 tweets on September 5 spanning personal grief, political outrage, international policy, and environmental opinion — unusually high single-day volume - Rapid topic-switching: personal grief post (Norma Foerderer's death) interspersed with Syria geopolitics and wind turbine commentary - All-caps companion tweet ('AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER') indicates elevated arousal state same day ### Clinical **Malignant Narcissism:** - Narcissistic: 55% - Antisocial: 25% - Paranoid: 10% - Sadism: 15% **Defense Mechanisms:** - rationalization (neurotic) - devaluation (immature) - displacement (neurotic) **Cognitive Complexity:** - Complexity: 45% **Parasocial Techniques:** - Direct address of 'President Obama' creates illusion of intimate advisory relationship with followers watching - Expertise performance allows followers to feel they share superior knowledge with Trump against an incompetent establishment ## Fact Checks (1) _The model's verdicts from 2026-02-26._ > If Obama was going to attack Syria, he should've done it as a surprise, not after public announcement **MOSTLY TRUE** Obama made the 'red line' statement publicly in August 2012; debated Syrian intervention for weeks in public; announced on August 31, 2013 he would seek Congressional authorization; Secretary Kerry testified publicly before the Senate on September 5 urging authorization. The element of operational surprise was substantially compromised. That said, whether a surprise strike was strategically or legally feasible, or would have produced better outcomes, is a judgment call beyond factual verification. Sources: https://www.factcheck.org/2017/04/trumps-line-syria/; https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/apr/05/greta-van-susteren/fact-checking-trump/; https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-reverses-policy-syrian-airstrikes-after-years-tweeting-disapproval-n743756 Overall Veracity: 80% ## Tags - Syria (95%) - Obama_criticism (85%) - supply_seeking (70%) - grandiosity_expertise_performance (75%) - rationalization (65%) - devaluation (60%) - conditional_ad_hominem (65%) - self_contradiction_2018_Syria (90%) - likely_authentic_Trump (63%) ## That day _From trump.fm's machine-generated digest of the day, not his words._ **Oracle and Avenger: Midnight Leno Devaluation Spiral, 15-Post Syria Campaign Deploys First MAGA Volleys, and a Rare Grief Rupture Reveals Genuine Object Constancy** September 5, 2013 presents a psychologically dense, multi-phase day that begins—in local New York time—on the evening of September 4 (EDT) with a complete narcissistic idealization-to-devaluation cycle targeting Jay Leno, triggered by Leno's failure to defend Trump against Bill Maher's mockery on the prior day's program. The nocturnal Leno sequence (posts x_375365504405229600 through x_375476664756875264, 9:11 PM–12:33 AM EDT) constitutes the day's only genuine rage spiral and contains a clinically significant internal contradiction: within 26 minutes, Trump claims both to have appeared on Leno's show "many times" and to have "always" declined invitations—assessed as confabulation under narcissistic stress rather than deliberate deception. A compressed maximum sleep window of approximately 4.6 hours separates this midnight cluster from a 5:11 AM EDT resumption of low-intensity supply-seeking, consistent with early insomnia secondary to unresolved emotional activation. The day's dominant narrative engine is a sustained 15-post Syria anti-intervention campaign (7:07 AM–7:41 PM EDT) driven by the G20 Summit's Syria crisis debate. Trump positions himself as a prescient civilian oracle superior to the President, Secretary of State, and the entire national security apparatus, commanding Obama in ALL CAPS (x_375609403376144384) and deploying five distinct rhetorical registers: raw emotional activation, graphic atrocity amplification, strategic critique, catastrophizing, and transactional framing. Most clinically notable is the complete absence of humanitarian framing across all 15 Syria posts—1,400+ sarin casualties were the central fact of concurrent Senate testimony, yet they appear nowhere in Trump's moral calculus. The Syria cluster contains the day's four elevated-danger posts: a casual Iran nuclear-strike suggestion (x_375600015714316288), dual organ-eating atrocity amplifications (x_375600452882423808), and blanket terrorist labeling of all Syrian opposition (x_375759718251503616). Three deployments of "Make America great again" on this single day—nine months post-trademark filing—establish this session as a key anchor point in the slogan's organic pre-political crystallization. Two ruptures punctuate the oracle performance. The first is genuine: the death of Norma Foerderer (x_375650504778346496) produces one of the rarest unguarded grief expressions in the full corpus—post centers the deceased rather than Trump's own loss, self-aggrandizement is notably absent, representing a rare marker of genuine object constancy. The second is instrumental: four anti-wind-turbine posts advance Trump's undisclosed active litigation against the Aberdeen Bay wind farm adjacent to his Menie Estate golf resort, their calculated low-affect register contrasting sharply with the emotionally reactive Syria cluster and revealing two distinct psychological operating modes calibrated by financial self-interest vs. identity performance. The day's 50-post volume, compressed sleep, and sustained intensity yield a moderate hypomanic concern classification that does not clear clinical threshold but warrants documentation as above-baseline activity. Full digest for 2013-09-05: https://trump.fm/date/2013-09-05/analysis ## Citation - APA: Trump, D. J. (2013, September 5). If President Obama was going to attack Syria, he... [Social media post]. X (Twitter). trump.fm. https://trump.fm/post/x_375660569581613060 - MLA: Trump, Donald J. "If President Obama was going to attack Syria, he should’ve..." X (Twitter), 5 Sep. 2013. trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/x_375660569581613060. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026. - Chicago: Donald J. Trump, "If President Obama was going to attack Syria, he should’ve...," X (Twitter), September 5, 2013, archived at trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/x_375660569581613060. ## 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/x_375660569581613060 - Analysis as JSON: https://trump.fm/api/analysis/x_375660569581613060 - All citation formats: https://trump.fm/api/cite/x_375660569581613060 - Same day: https://trump.fm/date/2013-09-05 - The record alone, without the analysis: https://trump.fm/post/x_375660569581613060.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`._