Analysis: Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took...

8y ago Mar 18, 2018 at 12:22 PM

Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?

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AI Analysis

Machine-generated analysis of the post above on 2026-03-14. Not written by the author of the post.

Danger Level

Elevated

Narcissistic State

Mixed

Authorship

Self-Written

Intensity

72%

This post constitutes a clinically significant preemptive evidence-delegitimization campaign triggered by an exposure-type narcissistic injury. McCabe's firing surfaced the existence of contemporaneous memos by both McCabe and Comey documenting private interactions with Trump — records that represent a qualitatively different threat than media criticism: irrefutable documentary evidence of potential obstruction. Trump's response deploys a full DARVO sequence (Deny/Attack/Reverse Victim-Offender) alongside pathological denial ("he never took notes"), projection of agenda-driven fabrication, and rationalization ("probably at a later date"). The rhetorically significant innovation is the coinage "Fake Memos," which deliberately extends the successful "Fake News" epistemic delegitimization brand into the legal/evidentiary domain. By posing it as a question ("Can we call them Fake Memos?"), Trump plants the label while preserving deniability, simultaneously enrolling his audience as co-authors of the counter-narrative. Authentic authorship is highly probable (Sunday 8:22 AM Eastern, stream-of-consciousness hedging, rhetorical question format). No cognitive decline indicators present; the post is calculated rather than disorganized. Danger is rated elevated: the post represents obstruction-normalization rhetoric that may chill institutional record-keeping and preemptively poisons evidentiary foundations for the active Mueller investigation for millions of followers. Consistent with the malignant narcissistic pattern documented across this period.

Authorship Analysis

Self-Written

Indicators:

Posted 08:22 AM Eastern Time on a Sunday (UTC 12:22, Trump at Mar-a-Lago or White House — Eastern timezone, UTC-4)
Weekend morning timing consistent with authenticated 'executive time' tweet pattern
Stream-of-consciousness hedging: 'I don't believe... probably at a later date'
Informal rhetorical question closing ('Can we call them Fake Memos?') — signature Trump parasocial enrollment device
Creative brand extension of 'Fake' label to new domain (memos), characteristic of authentic spontaneous Trump coinage

Psychological Profile

▶ State

Mixed State

Trigger: Narcissistic Injury — Exposure (McCabe and Comey contemporaneous memos documenting interactions with Trump)

Rage: Intensity 62% targeting Andrew McCabe and James Comey

Proportionality

30%

Sentiment

-0.68

▶ Clinical

Malignant Narcissism:

Narcissistic

78%

Antisocial

68%

Paranoid

74%

Sadism

38%

Defense Mechanisms:

denialprojectionrationalizationdevaluation

Cognitive Complexity:

Complexity

100%

Parasocial Techniques:

'Can we call them Fake Memos?' — royal 'we' enrolls audience as co-conspirators in collective reality distortionBrand extension of 'Fake' label triggers conditioned audience skepticism from prior 'Fake News' conditioningRhetorical question format solicits affirmation rather than inquiry

Danger Assessment

Elevated

Indicators:

Preemptive delegitimization of documentary evidence in active federal criminal investigation
Obstruction-normalization rhetoric building audience predisposition to reject future adverse evidence
Potential chilling effect on government officials maintaining contemporaneous records
Coordinated 48-hour institutional delegitimization campaign targeting FBI/DOJ during active investigation
Extension of epistemological corrosion strategy from media coverage to primary-source legal documentation

Gaslighting Detected:

DARVO sequence: denial of records ('never took notes'), attack on creators ('lying James Comey,' 'own agenda'), reversal to victim positioning (Trump as target of manufactured evidence)
Retroactive fabrication theory ('probably at a later date') — no evidentiary basis, functions to invert the credibility of legitimate documentation
'Can we call them Fake Memos?' — parasocial enrollment in collective reality distortion using rhetorical question for deniability
Brand extension of 'Fake' label to delegitimize primary-source documentary evidence, mirroring successful 'Fake News' epistemological poisoning strategy
Minimization of interaction history ('Spent very little time') to reduce evidentiary weight of any resulting records

Reality Distortions:

'He never took notes when he was with me' — asserts knowledge of another person's private behavior with no evidentiary basis
Frames FBI contemporaneous memo-keeping (standard documented practice) as anomalous evidence of fabrication
'Probably at a later date' — presents pure conjecture as plausible alternative history
Implies both McCabe and Comey independently fabricated records as coordinated conspiracy

Fact Checks (3)

"He [McCabe] never took notes when he was with me"

Unverifiable

Trump has no epistemic basis for this claim; FBI officials at McCabe's level are trained to maintain contemporaneous notes as standard practice. Subsequent events confirmed McCabe did maintain detailed notes. The claim is asserted without evidence and contradicted by institutional norms and later disclosed records.

"I don't believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date"

False

No evidence of retroactive memo fabrication was ever produced. The DOJ IG investigation into McCabe focused on his candor about media disclosures — not fabrication of interaction records. Contemporaneous memo-keeping was confirmed as McCabe's and Comey's established practice. The 'at a later date' theory was never corroborated.

"Same with lying James Comey [implying Comey's memos were similarly fabricated]"

Mostly False

Comey's contemporaneous memos documenting his interactions with Trump were confirmed as authentic by DOJ IG review. They were created in real-time, not retroactively. Labeling Comey a 'liar' regarding the memos specifically is not supported by any investigation outcome; while Comey was criticized for some handling decisions, the authenticity of his contemporaneous notes was not credibly disputed.

Receipts

No contradictions with other posts detected yet.

Psychological Analysis: Trump Post — 2018-03-18T12:22:11Z

Authorship Attribution

Verdict: Authentic Trump (high confidence)

Posted at 08:22 AM Eastern on a Sunday, placing it firmly within Trump's documented "executive time" morning tweet window. The speculative hedging ("I don't believe... probably at a later date"), stream-of-consciousness sentence fragment ("Same with lying James Comey."), and spontaneous rhetorical question coinage ("Can we call them Fake Memos?") are all hallmarks of unmediated authentic composition. The creative brand extension of "Fake" to a new domain — memos — reflects real-time conceptual improvisation characteristic of Trump rather than aide-drafted messaging, which tends toward structured event announcements and polished grammar.

Psychological Trigger: Exposure-Type Narcissistic Injury

The proximate trigger is McCabe's firing (March 16–17) and the consequent emergence into public awareness of contemporaneous memos kept by both McCabe and Comey documenting their private interactions with Trump. This constitutes an exposure-subtype narcissistic injury — the most destabilizing trigger for this personality organization. Unlike criticism (which can be deflected as opinion) or defeat (which can be reframed as unfair), documentary evidence represents potential irrefutable unmasking of private conduct. The response here is not pure rage but a calculated-yet-emotionally-driven preemptive strike: delegitimize the records before their contents become fully public.

Defense Mechanism Analysis

Denial (Pathological): "He never took notes when he was with me" is a claim Trump cannot possibly know to be true, representing a flat refusal of external reality. FBI officials are trained to maintain contemporaneous records as standard operational practice; McCabe's notes are not anomalous. This is denial in the clinical sense — refusal to accept a reality that threatens the self.

Projection (Immature): By accusing McCabe of manufacturing memos "to help his own agenda," Trump projects the very record-manipulation behavior this post itself enacts. Trump is constructing a counter-narrative without evidence; he attributes this same behavior to McCabe without evidence. Classic projection: the disowned impulse is attributed to the threatening other.

Rationalization (Neurotic): "Probably at a later date" provides a logical-sounding mechanism for the fabrication theory, lending pseudo-evidentiary structure to what is pure conjecture. This converts raw denial into an apparently reasoned position.

Devaluation (Immature): "Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe" minimizes the interaction history, thereby diminishing the evidentiary weight any resulting memos could carry.

Gaslighting & DARVO Analysis

Strong DARVO pattern present:

Deny: "He never took notes when he was with me" — denies the existence/authenticity of records
Attack: "Lying James Comey," "to help his own agenda" — attacks the character of the record-keepers
Reverse Victim/Offender: Positions Trump as target of a manufactured evidence conspiracy; casts senior FBI officials as the corrupt actors

The rhetorical question "Can we call them Fake Memos?" is the pivot point of the gaslighting architecture. By framing it as a question, Trump:

Introduces the delegitimizing concept with plausible deniability ("I was just asking")
Invites audience co-authorship, increasing their investment in the counter-narrative
Extends the "Fake" epistemic brand — successfully applied to media — into the legal/evidentiary domain

This represents a qualitative escalation in Trump's reality-distortion campaign: not merely attacking media coverage of events, but attacking primary-source documentary evidence of events. The societal danger of this move is significant — it attempts to preemptively poison the evidentiary well for an active federal investigation.

Narrative Identity (McAdams Level 3)

Protagonist role: Innocent target of coordinated evidence fabrication by embedded corrupt officials
Contamination sequence: Rightful presidency → infiltrated/sabotaged by agenda-driven Deep State actors
Contrasting others: McCabe and Comey as the corrupt, lying foils against which Trump's victimized integrity is defined
Identity claims: Implicitly — I tell the truth; they manufacture lies
Archetypal resonance: Warrior/Victim hybrid — the embattled sovereign persecuted by treacherous courtiers who falsify records

Level 1 Trait Analysis (Big Five)

Extraversion (high, 0.75): Assertive, dominant, driving the public narrative
Agreeableness (very low, 0.12): Hostile, suspicious, zero deference to institutional norms
Conscientiousness (low, 0.33): Impulsive broadcasting of unverified speculation
Neuroticism (moderately high, 0.72): Threat-reactive, hostile, dysregulated under exposure pressure
Openness (very low, 0.18): Rigid reality frame, closed to alternative interpretations of events

Cognitive Status

No indicators of language-production deficits in this post. Syntax is simple but purposeful; the rhetorical strategy is coherent and internally consistent. The speculative hedge "probably at a later date" shows controlled deployment of uncertainty language rather than confabulation. Complexity score is moderate-low (45/100), consistent with established baseline for Trump's tweet-format communication. No deviation from prior baseline warranting cognitive flag.

Danger Assessment: Elevated

This post does not contain explicit violent imagery or dehumanizing language, but it represents obstruction-normalization rhetoric with elevated danger characteristics:

Attempting to delegitimize documentary evidence central to an active federal criminal investigation
Potentially chilling effect on government officials considering keeping contemporaneous records
Building the groundwork for dismissing future adverse evidence as fabricated — this primes millions of followers to reject any documentary findings from Mueller investigation
Pattern of coordinated attacks on FBI/DOJ institutional credibility in conjunction with active investigation is consistent with pre-obstruction behavior

Fact Verification

Claim	Verdict	Evidence
"He [McCabe] never took notes when he was with me"	Unverifiable	Trump has no epistemic basis for this claim; FBI officials at McCabe's level are trained to maintain contemporaneous notes as standard practice. Subsequent events confirmed McCabe did maintain detailed notes. The claim is asserted without evidence and contradicted by institutional norms and later disclosed records.
"I don't believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date"	False	No evidence of retroactive memo fabrication was ever produced. The DOJ IG investigation into McCabe focused on his candor about media disclosures — not fabrication of interaction records. Contemporaneous memo-keeping was confirmed as McCabe's and Comey's established practice. The 'at a later date' theory was never corroborated.
"Same with lying James Comey [implying Comey's memos were similarly fabricated]"	Mostly False	Comey's contemporaneous memos documenting his interactions with Trump were confirmed as authentic by DOJ IG review. They were created in real-time, not retroactively. Labeling Comey a 'liar' regarding the memos specifically is not supported by any investigation outcome; while Comey was criticized for some handling decisions, the authenticity of his contemporaneous notes was not credibly disputed.

Overall Veracity: 23%

Longitudinal Context

This post is part of a coordinated 48-hour narrative campaign following McCabe's firing (March 17–18 posts all targeting FBI/DOJ credibility: collusion denial, McCabe firing celebration, Mueller delegitimization, Comey attacks). The "Fake Memos" coinage is the most novel and strategically significant element — it represents an attempt to expand the Fake News epistemological framework into the legal domain, a documented escalation from the established baseline.