The Signorile Report

It’s Friday, so yeah, some fun.

During a discussion about the dangers of Donald Trump, Joe from Texas, a hard-core MAGA Trump supporter, called me on my SiriusXM program and asked, “What privileges or rights did we ever lose under Donald J. Trump?”

I gave him a quick answer, offering just three examples of how Trump stripped the rights of groups—and it took all of 30 seconds. I then said, “But I’m not here to answer your questions—you’re here to tell us your thoughts,” giving him the stage to offer an opinion.

He responded by saying, “Well, you went on a diatribe there!”

And yeah, I just blew my stack at that point. I mean, I was answering a question he asked me in 30 f*****g seconds!

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As he tried to inject MAGA b******t and disinformation, I directed him to tell me what rights Joe Biden took from him. He then proceeded to claim that his wife lost her job because she wouldn’t get vaxxed.

I then had to attempt to educate him about public health and ask if he got a measles shot and if his children did—or were they thrown out of school?

Of course, he didn’t answer any of these questions as the f-bombs flew from both of us. That’s because he wasn’t interested in having a discussion—he was just interested in pushing garbage. And I wasn’t having it.

I’m sure I sounded a bit nutty to some, and this did get very silly by the end! But when more MAGA called in but didn’t want to come on the air—cowards!—and just told my producers to relay that I’m a “dick,” I knew it was mission accomplished.

Listen in, and let me know your thoughts!

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Another Friday, and, like last week, I’m ending with a laughable example of the MAGA mindset.

So, Brian from Wisconsin called my SiriusXM program, and he took a slightly different tack.

First off, he was civil. And he falsely posed as non-MAGA, saying he was going to try to help me make sense of why Republicans still support Donald Trump. (He even went so far at one point as to call Trump an “egotistical, maniacal lunatic” and “probably a jerk.”)

You have to stick with it a little bit, because at first it seems like he's in agreement with me.

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Then he began to make his case, and it was sounding like the same old crap. Trump is an “anti-establishment guy” and an “outsider.”

“If he comes back a second time,” Brian said, “knowing how the levers of government work,” he “could be more effective.”

Ok, that’s when the MAGA cult was totally evident. I, of course, refuted the nonsense about Trump as anti-establishment and an outsider.

And I asked Brian what Trump did for the average person. At first, he didn’t come back right away, so I asked again, and I asked him to list five things Trump did for the average person. I swear it seemed like he then read them from the Trump campaign web site—or they were just well-rehearsed mantras in the cult brain.

I told him all were completely false—including Brian’s claim that Trump “brought peace and prosperity,” and I asked about COVID and the over a million people dead from COVID and the economic calamity that ensued.

Just a couple of things I want to point out: Sometimes when I have calls like this, I’m obviously responding rapidly and collecting all of my thoughts—and yes, getting worked up in the face of someone throwing out distortions—and later I think, wow, I should have said this, and this, and this!

So, in that vein: President Obama didn’t just grow the economy dramatically, as I told Brian when he said Trump grew the economy faster than any president; he took us out of the Great Recession, which George Bush and the GOP helped create by deregulating banks and pouring trillions into Iraq.

Brian also said, as one of the five great things Trump did, that Trump allocated money to historically Black colleges and universities, and I pointed out that so did President Obama and even President Bush.

But in fact, Trump simply signed a bill “restoring” $250,000 million that lapsed when Republicans in Congress failed to renew it, and Democrats in the Senate pushed for it. (This came after Trump himself threatened to cut $20 million from HBCUs in 2017 and backed off after supporters implored him not to do it.) President Obama, over the course of his presidency, allocated $4 billion to HBCUs. And Bush actually increased funding by 30% in his budgets, which recklessly cut many other programs.

Also, when I said that if Trump had actually handled COVID well, he’d have won in a landslide, just like Bush after 9/11, that obviously was a misstatement. Mea culpa. Bush didn’t run right after 9/11 (he’d just been elected to office the year before); his approval, which is what I meant, soared because of the way he spoke to the nation about 9/11, unlike the way Trump spoke about COVID. (Bush of course would see that approval tumble because of the reckless, criminal Iraq War, and he barely won re-election in 2004.)

Also, I don’t really think Trump would have won if he handled COVID well, because of all the other terrible things he did as president. It is, of course, unknowable, because if Trump had handled COVID well, he’d likely have handled a lot of other things better, as it would have shown him as a better president and a better person. He is simply a horrible human being.

All of that said, listen in and let me know your thoughts. And have a great weekend!

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Happy Friday! Always a good day, as we end the week, to check in on the idiocy of the MAGA cult, as I try—try is the key word—to make sense of these people.

David in Nevada called into my SiriusXM program this week and showed us another example of how the MAGA base not only thrives on misinformation but really doesn’t care even if you get them to admit the truth about Donald Trump’s horrendous actions.

“Apparently, I'm one of those people that you're saying is a cult member,” he said, adding, “The more I listen to you the more I want to support Trump. Just because you say it was an insurrection doesn’t mean it was.”

I love when they tell me I’m the reason why they’re supporting Trump!

Sorry, don’t blame me for your willfully giving yourself over to a con man. (And why are you calling to tell me this anyway?)

“Well, that's the cult speaking,” I told him. Then I recited all the crimes Donald Trump has been charged with or found by a jury or a judge to have engaged in.

Those are facts, David, I said. Are you supporting a rapist and a man who engaged in massive fraud?

David had no idea that in fact a jury and a judge ruled on those issues in civil trials, believing it was still all to be decided.

Cornered by the truth, he switched to…the worth of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and the judge in the New York fraud case concluding it was worth $18 million rather than, as David said, “hundreds of millions.”

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David didn’t know that Trump had actually said it was worth $1.5 billion, which I informed him about. I asked him, Do you believe it’s worth that much, yes or no? He replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care,” even though he was the one to bring it up, switching to that topic just seconds before.

That’s precisely it, I said: you don’t care—even if Trump engaged in crimes. And that’s the cult speaking.

David even had to admit that Trump said he grabs women by their genitals, when I asked him about it. “If he said it, he said it,” David replied, but “here’s the thing: in 2019, the gas prices was less than…”

Gas prices? I had to cut him off on that one, and I took it back to the insurrection. He was forced to admit he was “not okay” with it, but, but, but….Joe Biden blah blah.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts. And have a good weekend!

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Ron from New Mexico called into my SiriusXM program as I was discussing George Santos and the newest indictment against him, positioning himself as above it all.

Ron remained calm and cool, as he tried mightily to promote a false equivalency between Democrats and Republicans, claiming that "it's all politics” and they’re all the same. “I’m not a Trump fan, by the way,” he said. Yeah…right.

He kept this up for quite a while—focusing on newly-indicted-again Senator Bob Menendez and what he believes Democrats would be saying if the New Jersey governor were a Republican. Ron believed he was duping us into thinking he wasn’t MAGA and was just a “they’re all corrupt” guy who is disgusted with “both sides.”

I let him continue to put out his claims, as he was just giving me more to work with. I debunked them while also asking him to give me evidence of them—which he never did—and he just kind of had to quietly concede on this or that point, though he wouldn’t give up, continually going on to something else.

Eventually, Ron’s true inner-MAGA surfaced after he was getting nowhere, and he desperately switched to—you guessed it!—Hunter Biden and “shell companies” and “how did Joe Biden make all of his money?”

Honestly, this call went on for a while because he was probably the most reasonable Trumper I’ve had in a long time—even if he was dishonest, posing as a “both sides” non-MAGA guy.

I’m happy to speak with people who are oppositional, as long as we can have a civil conversation. It does get tedious, however, when they’re clearly just trying desperately to find something, anything they think can’t be debunked, and going into the grab bag. I had to eventually let him go.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

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Warning: I really became kind of crazy and aggressive with this guy who called my SiriusXM program.

But there is a method to the madness!

I wouldn’t treat a guest to the show this way, even if they were a conservative. But a caller who represents himself falsely? Sorry, he’s not getting any such courtesy. And, again, there was a reason why I went in this direction.

James from California claimed to be a Democrat and said "we" were treating Donald Trump terribly. But it became clear he was not only a lying Trumper; my radar was detecting a major league far-right Christian nationalist extremist and Qanon cultist.

The conversation on the program at the time had been focused on the GOP’s bogus impeachment inquiry of President Biden, but James brought the discussion to the impeachments of Donald Trump—of course—and then shifted to election fraud.

I can’t say I knew exactly what he’d eventually blurt out, but something told me if I took him on hard, he’d crack and reveal his true agenda. And sure enough, when confronted forcefully, he went there: "Democrats are legislating abomination. You’re legislating homosexuality and the murder of innocent babies."

Just some nutty fun for your Thursday. Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

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After the GOP debate, Don from New Orleans called my SiriusXM program to say, well….a whole bunch of stuff.

And really, it was a sort of wacky and meandering six minutes, though interesting and not heated, unlike what almost always happens with Trumpers.

Just about every question I asked was like giving him some more rope and letting him hang himself.

Don eventually claimed that he is suspicious of everyone who goes into politics as a career, versus those without political experience. That’s why he thought Vivek Ramaswamy won the debate, he said, because he’s an "outsider" and thus isn’t power hungry (like Trump). I know you’re probably laughing hard about that one. Don explained why:

I'm a local elected official. Okay. Very local. Elected official. Um. And I am very skeptical of anybody who spends a lifetime in politics.

So, the argument he’s making, I said, is that there’s something sinister about someone who made politics their life. But, I asked, there’s nothing sinister about someone who achieved wealth and fame, like Donald Trump, and then used that to get into the White House and grab power?

He responded by saying, "by the way, I’m enjoying this conversation"—which I don’t think was true—and then went on:

The way I look at it is, if you've been in politics and you've worked your way up and you've spent all of this time in the Congress, the state legislature, the federal legislature, and the executive branches, you've become so accustomed to power. You're more concerned with keeping that job and keeping that power than just doing the job.

“Come on Don,” I responded, then rhetorically asking, "Trump was not obsessed with power? And keeping power?" explaining to him that he was completely undoing his own argument.

"He helped other powerful people,” I went on. “How many people did he pardon? They did a lot of sleazy things, didn't they? Terrible things. Even the guy who was governor of Illinois, what a terrible thing he did. He sold a Senate seat to somebody. Right. Wasn't that terrible that Donald Trump used his power to pardon that guy, Rod Blagojevich?"

Don responded that, it’s "not right," and then added, "they all do it." Which again, completely undermined his case. Listen in and let me know your thoughts.

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Is Donald Trump already ineligible to run for president in 2024, no matter what happens with regard to any of the 91 counts against him in four indictments?

Delightfully, there’s been so much discussion about it! Surely that alone is riling Trump, which is always a good thing. The talk really ramped up in recent weeks after two conservative Federalist Society constitutional scholars’ pending law review article—concluding that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution disqualifies Trump—went public.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Former judge Michael J. Luttig, a respected conservative jurist who testified before the January 6th committee, and the esteemed legal scholar Professor Lawrence Tribe also agree that Trump is ineligible under the 14th Amendment.

And there has been some movement in the states. In New Hampshire, an effort is already underway within the GOP itself—with Republicans feuding—as the secretary of state is seeking legal advice from the state attorney general on removing Trump from the ballot. A Florida attorney has filed suit in that state, seeking to disqualify Trump. For months, two civil rights organizations have been pressuring secretaries of state in several states—Nevada, California, Oregon, Colorado, and Georgia—to disqualify Trump from the ballot.

All it will take is one state to remove Trump for the issue to be challenged in court and get to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would have to rule that Trump is disqualified in all states—or in no states. It’s high stakes, as no one knows what the court will do, and there are definitely scholars and political strategists who have their doubts. So what is the most ironclad way to go about it and get the Supreme Court aboard?

Professor Edward Foley, Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at Ohio State University, former Ohio solicitor general, and contributing columnist for the Washington Post, believes the strongest case would come from a state where the state legislature gave express powers to the secretary of state or other election officials to remove a candidate under the 14th amendment. And he says that it’s thus imperative that a state legislature pass that law now and a governor sign it well before the 2024 presidential election.

Foley points out that the Supreme Court in the recent Moore v. Harper decision—in which the high court thankfully in large part ruled against the dangerous "independent legislature theory," the idea that state legislatures, not state courts, decide elections—left too much wiggle room. Others have agreed that the Moore decision wasn’t a complete win for those who want to protect elections, as it left too much open.

Foley wrote in the Washington Post that the Moore decision signaled that "if a state statute has not already authorized administrative officers to seek disqualification of presidential candidates," then the Court might view an attempt by a state official to do so as a "usurpation of the state legislature’s prerogative to determine the ‘manner’ of conducting presidential elections."

So again, he believes a blue state that has complete control of the legislature and the governor’s mansion—say, Michigan, California, or New York—should pass a law right now, well before the 2024 election. Professor Foley joined me on my SiriusXM program last week, and you can listen in here to the fascinating and important discussion.

A transcript is provided below, slightly edited for space and clarity.

Michelangelo Signorile: We've been talking about this for a for a while and discussing it with those who've written on it from a more left political perspective or progressive, looking at the Constitution. And then we had two Federalist Society constitutional scholars who you talk about as well in the piece that you wrote, who are publishing an article in a journal, making the argument from obviously a very conservative point of view. Talk a little bit about their piece.

Edward Foley: As you mentioned, these two scholars, who have a high reputation in the law school world in general, but are known to be on the conservative side of the perspective on things, are using the methodology of what's called original meaning of the Constitution to interpret it according to how the framers or authors of the Constitution understood it at the time it was adopted. 

And so they're applying that approach to this part of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was adopted during Reconstruction after the Civil War, has lots of important provisions in it, like the equal protection clause and the due process clause. But it also has its Section 3, which is this disqualification provision aimed to disqualify people who joined the Confederacy during the Civil War, betraying their oaths to the country because they had served in the federal government and then betrayed their oath to the Constitution.

And so this provision disqualified them from ever serving in government again at the the end of the Civil War, as part of Reconstruction. But what this law review article does with these two authors, from this original meaning perspective, they said, looking at the text, it's not just about the Civil War, it's about any insurrection or rebellion. And so that has meaning and they said that the [framers] meant it to apply broadly and in perpetuity, if you will. For as long as we have a Constitution and as long as this provision is in it, it means that if anybody, having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and served in government, betrays that oath in a way that's engaging in an insurrection, then they can no longer serve in government again.

So they go over it—I think it's about a couple of hundred pages—their law review article, explaining all the original intent behind that language in terms of its drafting during the reconstruction era, after the Civil War. They go into great detail about its initial applications and then explain why the January 6th attack on the Capitol qualifies as an insurrection event. And then Trump's role, because he obviously wasn't one of the people who breached into the Capitol that day, but his fomenting of the riot and the insurrection and then his role, in particular, as commander in chief and as president on January 6th, 2021, he had a constitutional responsibility to to take care that the laws were faithfully executed, including to stop that kind of riot and to stop people from preventing the lawful counting of the electoral votes. 

And he did none of that. He tweeted some [comments] that seemed to encourage the folks who were against Mike Pence at the time, as I know you know. And so these authors say that both his actions ahead of the riot and the insurrection and during it constitute engaging in the insurrection for purposes of the original meaning of this provision.

MS: Right. And they certainly responded to what they knew would be the criticism of their argument. And they clearly see it—that Donald Trump did engage in incitement, did engage in fomenting that insurrection.

EF: Yes, I think it's correct to say that from their perspective, they see it as clear. I think at one point they say it's not a close case from their perspective. That's where I would differ with them a little bit, although I'm of the same view that, properly applied, this provision should be understood to disqualify Trump because of his conduct that's on the public record as a result of the January 6th committee hearings and so forth. I think it is more debatable than they characterize it. You know, there are plausible arguments on both sides in particular of whether what Trump did was sufficient to count as engaging for purposes of this provision. Again, I come down on one side of that debate and the same side that they do. But I think I've got to be candid to acknowledge that there are already other people in response to this article who are coming down on the other side of that issue.

MS: And so it would be something that the courts would decide. And ultimately the Supreme Court, which has not ruled on this particular issue and this interpretation of the Constitution, because obviously we haven't been at this place before. And so what you write about in the piece, which I found very informative and fascinating, is that it basically needs to get to the Supreme Court. 

And the process to do that would mean that a state would have to move to take Donald Trump off of the ballot, arguing that he's not eligible to be on the ballot. And that sounds easy, but in fact, it means that a state legislature actually has to give the power to an elected official, a statewide elected official, to do that. Thus, it really needs to be a blue state, a state that at least has a legislature that is in control by the Democrats and and an elected official who is a Democrat as well. Talk a little bit about that.

EF: Yes, I think that's right. Unfortunately, it's not so easy. Maybe it should be in our democracy that all the rules for running elections should be pretty straightforward. But unfortunately, our rules for presidential elections in particular are very complicated because of the whole electoral college mechanism. And also, you know, we should—even though it's important to go down this road—we should recognize the momentous nature of it. If you believe in the right of citizens to vote, as I do, and the equality of voting rights, you want to be careful about denying the right of citizens to vote for the candidate of their choice. But we have provisions in the Constitution that do that. In other respects, there may be many Americans today who would like another opportunity to vote for Barack Obama, who think he was a great president and he'd be great again and maybe would prefer to vote for him as the Democratic nominee instead of Joe Biden next time. He's younger than Joe Biden, but he's not eligible because of another part of the Constitution that is much more straightforward. If you have two terms, that's it. 

And so there's no factual dispute about that. We're not allowed to vote for Barack Obama for president anymore. The question about whether or not Americans are allowed to vote for Donald Trump if they want to is more complicated because the only basis to disqualify him would be this provision that was in the aftermath of the Civil War. And that does require applying this old text to a new problem, as you said, that we haven't faced.

So the question is, who in American government should make that determination if indeed he's not allowed to be on the ballot? 

And one point that I really tried to stress in The Washington Post piece is that it's imperative, I think, to decide this in advance of the November 2024 election, because I think it would be terrible for Congress afterwards in the next January 6th [certification] meeting. This would be January 6th, 2025. If you think, hypothetically, that Trump is on the ballot, perhaps wins the Electoral College narrowly, but the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, as they may well do. The House is very much in play for 2024. The Senate is very close. I think for Congress to try to disqualify Trump on the grounds of this Section 3 of the 14th Amendment provision would be terrible because that would be taking people's votes away from them after they've cast them. 

And I just think that would make the next January 6th even more perilous than the previous one. So I think the time to do this is now, before the Republican convention in July of ’24. And the method, as you say, needs some clarification. I think we're going to see litigation on this issue anyway. There are a couple of interest groups that have announced in effect publicly—there’s news reporting on this—that they're going to try to get election officials to do this. So this is going to happen one way or the other.

MS: They're pressuring election officials in Nevada, in Georgia, Michigan, places where they hope to have, you know, somebody obviously thinking in the same way. And these are battleground states.

EF: Correct. And so what I tried to contribute was the best method to do this in an orderly way, in a fair way, would be for a state legislature to establish with a new statute exactly how this gets to court. So there's rights to cross examination and due process and so forth. That would then give a finding, you know, one way or the other: Trump is eligible or he's not eligible under this provision, and that would be immediately appealed and would quickly get to the US Supreme Court, which I think is the institution that has to decide this for the entire nation. Because if one state like Nevada does it, you know, he should either be on the ballot in all the states or not all the states. And if the U.S. Supreme Court was to say he is indeed disqualified, the supremacy clause of the Constitution would require other states to follow that. So let's get one state to create a good procedure, a clear procedure, because there's also the possibility that if you don't have this kind of new law, state officials will interpret existing law—it’s not really suitable for this kind of factual issue. I mean, yes, they can tell pretty easily if a candidate is 35 years old or not. That's an eligibility requirement to be president.The issue of citizenship, you know, is pretty straightforward factually, but this one would require a more lengthy trial.

MS: A state official like a secretary of state couldn't do this on his or her own? And the legislature would have to pass a law giving them that power? And then it would obviously be appealed and go through the courts.

EF: Yes and no. The state official, like the secretary of state, absolutely has to have this power from the legislature. No question about that. Under Article 2 of the Constitution. The trickier part is whether any existing law—without a new law—could be interpreted as already granting that power. And that's on a state by state, 50 state basis. And that's also a debatable proposition, I suspect, in some states, given the way they write their rules. There's a more plausible argument that an existing official already has that power. But this is an issue of such importance to the country. I don't think we should leave it in doubt. Right. And it's easy for a legislature to clarify that they want their officials to have this power.

MS: So you say a swing state controlled by Democrats such as Michigan could and should do this, but any single blue state would suffice because even if New York or California did it, it would be challenged. And as you said, if the Supreme Court ruled that he were ineligible, that would be it—ineligible in every every state in all 50 states.

EF: Exactly.

MS: That would be quite a task for the Supreme Court. Going by this Supreme Court's track record, what do you think they might do?

EF: Yeah, I think it could go either way. I think these two [Federalist Society] scholars who have written this new article are very, very respected. One of them clerked, I believe, for Chief Justice John Roberts. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, Chief Justice Roberts is necessarily going to agree with everything he writes. But, you know, independently of that, he's known as a very respected scholar. Both of them are in the conservative legal world. You know, the court today is 6-3 in terms of conservatives to liberals. And, you know, Justice Roberts is the one who’s not often, but sometimes, with the liberals on the four side of 5-4 splits. So it's not a guarantee either way. 

But I think this argument would be taken seriously, very seriously. I agree with you. The court would probably be reluctant. I mean, this is a momentous issue and they would, you know, tread carefully, but they are the highest court in the land and they exist for difficult cases. And so I think if a lower court, say the Michigan Supreme Court, for example, disqualified Trump, I think they would feel that it's incumbent upon them to resolve the question.

MS: And you're so right about it needing to be done now because not just looking back at, 2020 and of course, what happened there and what might happen. But also even thinking back to 2000, having the Supreme Court coming in at the very end after voting had happened, and then basically saying, sorry, it ends right here. Obviously, that left a very bad taste and a lot of people's mouths and real division in the country.

EF: Right, Right. I mean, sometimes disputes after the voting are unavoidable. I mean, the Bush versus Gore situation was obviously very difficult and did leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, as you say. But in that context, when you're fighting over 500 or so votes in the swing state of Florida with hanging chads, I think it was going to be a difficult issue, whatever.

And the goal is to try to avoid difficult issues. And with hindsight, we know we should have replaced the kinds of voting machines with hanging chads to avoid the problem in the first place. Right. And sort of what I'm trying to do is, I'm imagining there could be a problem afterwards that can be settled in advance so that we could avoid the worst kind of problems. So I think your reference to Bush versus Gore is correct in that sense.

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When last I spoke with Wayne State University translational neuroscientist, psychologist and PTSD expert, Dr. Seth Norrholm, he explained how the entire country was suffering from a collective trauma.

We focused on how the GOP, following on Donald Trump, became the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos, and the psychological toll MAGA has had on us all. It was an illuminating discussion that made sense to so many listeners to my SiriusXM program and subscribers to The Signorile Report—putting it in the frame of PTSD and collective trauma—about what they’d been experiencing.

We discussed toward the end of the interview what would help people to recover. And the answer came down to one word: justice. This is so true, he’d said, of those who’d suffered physical and psychological abuse for so many other reasons—including many of the people he treats—and it’s true in this case as well.

“You need to have Trump face consequences for his role in the insurrection,” he told me. “So without some kind of sweeping accountability to remove what I've called the cancer that is in our political system, there's not going to be any meaningful healthy change.”

Now that we have seen Trump indicted four times I decided to check in with Dr. Norholm about we were stand now, and if people were viewing possible recovery and better mental heath. We also discussed a concept he wrote about in a recent article, “contagious sociopaths,” who include those politicians who know better—or once did—but who mirror Trump because of the benefit they see, like Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham and Josh Hawley.

Clearly we’re far from out of the woods, and the GOP has only gotten more extreme. But do the indictments give us hope and thus help us recover? Listen in and let me know your thoughts.

Below is a transcript lightly edited for clarity and space.

Michelangelo Signorile: When my guest last came on the program, we discussed PTSD that has lingered collectively since Trump's presidency that so many people were experiencing. 

And, of course, those who experienced the brunt of Donald Trump's brutality experienced that even more deeply. [And we discussed] what is the best the way that people could heal? 

Justice is what we talked about [as a way to heal]. And maybe we're starting to see that a little bit. So I thought it would be great to speak with Dr. Seth Norholm once again. Welcome back to the program. Dr. Norholm.

Seth Norrholm: Hi Mike. It's good to be here again.

MS: I invited you on the program [in January] and you talked about how Americans on the whole had really experienced PTSD, Trumpism, the Trump era, Covid, all of it, and what impact it had on them. And I just want to recap that before we go further. Talk a little bit about that.

SN: Well, when we think about traumatic stress, you know, you think about the events that lead up to somebody experiencing a post traumatic stress response. And these are things like, you know, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, obviously war time conflict. And we know that in the population, about 70 to 80% of us are going to experience a traumatic event in our lifetime. And then the question is whether or not that traumatic event leads to mental health problems, psychological distress and things like that. So what we discussed last time was in the face of these potentially traumatizing events like the pandemic and like the natural disasters like Hurricane Maria that hit Puerto Rico and the hurricanes that have really devastated large parts of our Gulf Coast. 

These are all events that can lead to mental health problems. And if they're severe enough and impairing enough, post traumatic stress disorder. And so what we were seeing in that administration was that any kind of buffering against those traumatic effects that may be provided by the government, maybe provided by FEMA or the Red Cross was really being thwarted from the top. 

And so what we discussed was, rather than providing a lifeline or a support system for us as citizens, we were getting an antagonistic response. And this antagonistic response was really based on where you came from, where you lived, whether you were in a red state or a blue state, whether or not you were a female of color leading a particular place like Puerto Rico. And so suddenly there was a targeted approach as far as who we're going to protect and help and who we're just going to continue to traumatize and continue to do harm upon.

MS: And you talked about your concerns that Trump had ushered in so many other people, a Republican Party that had become a place for people who are engaging in pathological behavior, who were just exacerbating that PTSD, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like George Santos, people who had the same kind of extremist tendencies and personality issues as Donald Trump.

SN: Correct. And if you look at the evolution of the Republican Party since 2015, you know, initially during the run up to the election, you had other candidates on the GOP side who were saying it like it was. They were telling you exactly who Trump the candidate was and who potentially Trump the president would be. 

And that he was somebody who was galactically unfit, who didn't have the temperament, who had criminal tendencies already, and had the qualities of what we call malignant narcissism. So at that time, the GOP was really calling that out. And then when it became clear that Trump was the frontrunner, you saw many of these same individuals fall into line behind him to the point where they became enablers. 

And as you mentioned, you know, they began displaying these really—what we call sociopathic tendencies, which is inflicting harm upon your fellow man for some sort of gain without showing any kind of remorse. And so, what we saw over the last month now with these indictments and now the one that just came down last night [in Georgia] is you see glimmers of hope, right? So you saw a tweet or an X or whatever we're calling tweets now  from [Georgia Governor] Brian Kemp and from [former Lt. Governor] Jeff Duncan, saying, look, this this is criminal activity. The election was not stolen. This was all a big lie. 

So you're getting some glimmers from individuals who identified as Republicans and members of the GOP. But I really draw your attention to the responses of Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and individuals who intellectually know better. Ted Cruz being another example, who intellectually know better, but are continuing to perpetuate the big lie; they’re pretending, continuing to act in this sociopathic manner. 

So I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago where I talked about this concept of “contagious sociopathy.” And the idea was they saw that it worked for this individual who was a frontrunner in Trump. They saw that this MAGA approach, this sociopathic approach, was working. And so they decided to mimic it. And so I make the point in this recent article: it doesn’t matter if you are a true sociopath with a personality disorder who's inflicting harm on on somebody else, or if you're pretending to be a sociopath for political gain. The end result is the same, which is bringing harm upon us as American citizens.

MS: It can be learned behavior and obviously people can see rewards that come with it in that party. And certainly, as you pointed out, that party has a long way to go. 

I wanted to ask you, though, about what we are seeing with the indictments and what it may be doing for the majority of Americans who have experienced this PTSD. Because when we spoke the last time, at the very end of our interview, I asked you, what is it that could help people heal from this collective post-traumatic stress? And you said justice one word, right? People need to see justice. And all people were seeing and this is back in January, it seems like not long ago, but really at that time, all people were seeing was you know, a lot of foot dragging or nothing happening in the Justice Department. We hadn't seen any real action and there was a lot of anxiety. 

People were talking about that. And now with these indictments coming down, and we were able to see how Jack Smith has operated and certainly Fani Willis and Georgia, people do seem to be feeling differently. And I'm wondering if you're seeing at least the beginning of that healing. And obviously it's going to depend on what happens next.

SN: Yeah, that's right. And I think the example I used last time we spoke, you know, I deal a lot in my field with individuals who have been victims of of abuse. And the analogy I gave was, you know, you've got this abused spouse who calls law enforcement and they come to the House and law enforcement says something to the effect of, you know, we spoke with your husband and, you know, we just don't see enough to do anything about it. And, the abused spouse watches out the window as law enforcement pulls away and just having this profound sense of dejection because of this injustice. 

And so what we had to observe for at least four years was, the Mueller report was a potential inflection point for accountability and justice. And that was watered down by Bill Barr. And then there was the first impeachment where there was compelling evidence provided that there were high crimes and misdemeanors, and he was acquitted in the Senate. And then another impeachment after inciting the insurrection on the Capitol on January 6th, which also did not provide any conviction by the Senate. 

And as you noted before I came on today, you know, Mitch McConnell gave a very spirited rebuke of Trump and said, let's leave it to the legal system. And so for that few minutes when McConnell gave that speech, there was this idea that, well, wait a second, maybe the tide has turned and we're moving towards accountability and justice. And then there really nothing happened. And like you said, there was foot dragging. So when you talk about what the response is to this latest round of indictments, I really look at it in terms of three camps, and these are loosely defined, but three general camps.

One is those of us who knew all along what was happening, you know, those of us who had been gaslit into thinking that, you know, we were we were crazy and we were, you know, “libtards” and all these other terms that were applied to us. And we were just, you know, we were the ones that were out of our mind and these things weren't happening. So for that camp, who knew the criminality and corruption was there all along? You know, this past month has been vindicating and validating in the sense that much like the abused spouse, somebody has called out what has been going on for years and we're finally starting to see some accountability. So for a lot of people, especially last night [when the Georgia indictment were handed down], there was this validation, this big collective, I told you so about what was going on. 

The second camp would be those who identify as Republican or GOP, who have been toeing the line and really closing their eyes and holding their nose at what's been going on to to stick to that party line. And I think it's that second group that is probably the most able to see the sea change that is occurring and potentially, you know, the more moderate Republicans to see as Jeff Duncan said yesterday, it's time to separate themselves from Trump.

 And then the third camp. I had described this a few weeks ago in an article as being really much like a cult. And I even went as far as to say it was, you know, the largest and most dangerous cult in American history.

And it is because it is tearing at the fabric of our democracy and really jeopardizing what has been built for over 230 years. And I describe it in this these cult terms, because what you'll see in this third group after these indictments and again, call your attention to the Lindsey Grahams and the Ted Cruzes, they're going to dig their heels in to this cult like thinking. 

And they’re, regardless of the objective evidence that's presented in front of them, they're going to dig in their heels. They're still going to cry foul. They're still going to cry rigged election. And, you know, you might ask, well, how can they still cling to this in the face of all these indictments? And all of this evidence? All they need is a just a shred of some possibility that there was wrongdoing or there was some malfeasance with the election to to cling to the overall big lie. So it really is a matter of closing off whatever remnants remain. As far as you know, I think Trump put on his his Truth Social today that, you know, he's going to have a big press conference on Monday to present all this evidence of how it was a rigged election. And we know that's a lie and there is no evidence otherwise it would have been presented. But that still provides red meat to the cult following that we still have hope in our our lord and savior who's going to, you know, show us the the way, even though he's hit some obstacles along the way.

MS: They are not getting out of this anytime soon. I ask you this as somebody who's a member of the first group, as you are, too, and many of our listeners. I've seen in the media and I've not  been someone who has believed we've been served well by our media in covering a lot of this. But I've seen this line, in the last indictment and this one ,that Americans are becoming immune to it all. You know, they're becoming numb to these indictments. They can't tell the difference, this or that. And, you know, I think each time [there’s an indictment] we see something unique and different and new allegations and certainly the way Jack Smith went about it and certainly what we learned now in Georgia. [The media] are not using any empirical evidence. They're just claiming this. I feel like it's probably illuminating for a lot of people. But I wonder if am I overplaying that? So I just wanted your thought.

SN: You know, the fact that they've come, you know, sequentially in a rapid fire fashion, can be overwhelming. But I think you're right. I think the details are different enough. You know, one was classified documents. One was, you know, business fraud, one was the insurrection. And now we have specifically the efforts that were done in Georgia. So I think they're different enough that if you're paying attention and you're digesting, you know, the media reports as they come out, you can make that distinction.

I think what is really more of a danger than that first group becoming numb and immune to it is that third group becoming numb to immune to it and or not necessarily numb and immune, but avoiding the topic altogether and kind of lumping all of these indictments into, you know, political persecution and election interference by the left against the right. And so I think there's a tendency more to lump them together and have them be kind of this amorphous thing on the the extreme right and then on the more left leaning individuals. I agree.

MS: And I think sometimes the media is paying attention only to those people. Obviously, to heal further we need more justice. We need closure. We need to see convictions. And nobody knows if that will happen. Nobody knows if Donald Trump will actually serve time or if he will go to jail. And of course, if he does and this does bring him down, that third group that you're talking about is really going to have a complete and total meltdown. So just give us a thought about where we go from here and and what happens with regard to what may happen.

SN: Well, I would agree with you that that third group would have a meltdown. But I do want to point out that, you know, the law enforcement in Atlanta are really preparing for much more than what is transpired so far since this fourth indictment came down. I mean, they had barricades erected and they were, you know, priming for some smaller version of January 6th. And the honest thing is we just haven't seen that. So getting back to what you were saying a second ago, there is some, again, numbness and and lack of reactivity on that far right group because they're not responding the same way. Some of that has to do with the fact that time has elapsed. I mean, it's been two and a half years since January 6th, and they've heard a lot of the same rhetoric but seen no differences in terms of results. So I think they'll have a meltdown of sorts, but I honestly don't think it's going to be as extreme as anything we've seen before. Now, if there is some sort of incarceration, maybe that changes. You know, there's the real possibility because of Trump's continuing to badger witnesses and intimidate prosecutors and DA's, that maybe he's remanded into custody in Georgia because of the risk that he poses to the case and to the security of witnesses and and grand jurors who will be identified.

Maybe an incarceration or jailing him will tip the scale. But again, if you read the comments and if you read the revelations of those who have been indicted following January 6th, you'll see a lot of them have come to the realization that we would hope they would come to, which is, you know, “we believed the big lie. We thought we were the ones being patriots.” And then when they're slapped with prison time, they're slapped with fines, they're slapped with court cases. That realization becomes that much clearer. So I think you're right. I think there is going to be some element that loses their mind and tries to act out. But I also think there's going to be some element that says, “wait a second, you know, court cases and prison time are real. We can no longer live in this fantasy world because look at these real world consequences.”

MS: Obviously, that’s why we need justice, and closure.

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I don’t even know why I engaged in a discussion on my SiriusXM program with this guy, as he had no facts—literally didn’t know the names of players or politicians, just referring to them as “that guy”—but he is emblematic of many in MAGA world.

So sometimes you do have hear them, so we know what we’re dealing with, as painful as it is. They will just defend Donald Trump no matter what, even if it means calling a radio program and embarrassing themselves.

And you have to just call them out. (I’m from Staten Island and am Italian-American, so, yeah, I can call him a “goombah.” And I did.)

He is every stereotype of place, the only borough of New York City that voted for Trump—and where there was a rally over the weekend to stop migrant asylum-seekers from being sheltered there even though just about everyone living there, a place dominated by Italian-Americans, descended from immigrants. (And let me tell you that not everywhere there is like this!)

This exchange, by the way, took place on Monday, as the grand jury in Georgia was meeting but before the Trump indictment came down.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

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Programming note: I’ll be a taking a vacation from July 19th through July 28th, and won’t be posting to The Signorile Report.

In a discussion on my SiriusXM program recently after the damning recording surfaced in which Donald Trump admits he’s sharing classified war plans with people —and said could have declassified them when he was president, but didn’t—Jeff from Richmond, Virginia called to defend Trump.

He had to concede begrudgingly that it was all not good, that indeed Trump left the White House with classified documents and didn’t give them back….“but, but, but….”

But, but, but…if they were so worried about secret documents or highly classified documents in those boxes then they should not have left the White House...They should have gone through those records and made sure there were no top secret records….

They? Who is they? “The archives people,” he responded.

This was ludicrous because Trump isn’t a five-year-old. He’s an adult—who was the President—who should be honest and certainly responsible with government documents, and in fact must be so by law. It was the job of Trump, sorting through all boxes before he left the White House—and we may find out that in fact the staff who were helping him tried to stop him—not to take the documents with him. And then certainly to give them back.

Jeff was simply infantilizing Trump—the latest excuse.

He then began quoting Trump’s lawyer as the authority—which was hilarious—and had a lot of non-facts, clearly not having read much about the case. had to bring him up to speed and say good-bye. At least this one remained civil.

After the call, I explained that it’s not the government’s job to make sure Trump doesn’t rob a bank either. He simply shouldn’t rob a bank.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

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