The Psychological Need For Cameras in the Courtroom

"How the News is Psychologically Broken, and How to Fix It" series

If you read, What America Needs Psychologically From the trump Trials, you saw commentary like:

“Experience and basic observation has taught us trump’s entire life and presidency has been a crime spree of spending and stealing other people’s money (and property and services). It is right there for all to see if they choose to see it, and yet he has rarely if ever faced any true consequences for his pathologically disordered patterns of always doing what is best for trump, at everyone else’s expense.”

“These people are pathological, which means they will never stop going after what they crave like zombies for brains, unless we stop them. It’s just their nature, like the fable of the frog and the scorpion, so the sooner America and the world learns that there are many more psychologically disordered human scorpions than is known, who will always try to take over or will kill us all, the better.”

“What will not help us get there is having so many of our brilliant minds spending days, weeks, months and years analyzing and parsing every single aspect of what should be trump’s open and shut cases. Therefore, we at CNI implore all the top political experts who fill our in-boxes to put a bunch of their brain power towards being more solutional, since two things America definitely needs to get us out of this mess are fewer solution-less political emails and more wise and workable solutions.”

In other words, trump and his co-conspirators, enablers, henchmen and flying monkeys going to prison is long overdue, so it seems a waste of time and energy rehashing everything we already know about trump’s corruptions day after day, month after month, in a trial. Therefore, I get why so many do not want the trump trials televised and fear he will just make it another big circus to mock our judicial system, and that he will continue to manipulate the gullible and lazy media into doing his bidding, by treating his pathological liar spin on reality as a credible point of view, because he will do that. He can’t help it. It is his lifelong narcissist pathology.

Certainly, those of us who recognized these types of Cluster B disordered con men never want to see or hear from trump or any of his fascist clowns ever again. I myself have always been repelled by his voice and narcissistic behaviors going back to The Apprentice, so it would be logical to assume I would not want the trump trials televised either, just so I do not have to hear or see him, and generally you would be right.

Until today, I have mostly been ignoring the now long-running debate about whether or not there should be cameras in the courtroom during the trials, because I ran into the wall of mixed-feelings a while back, and moved on without an answer. However, now that actual trials are clearly in sight and cameras have become a hotly debated issue, it made sense to put this history turning decision through the Counter-Narcissist prism, to clarify which answer is the most solutional.

Most of the camera debates go on some variation of the following.

Anti-Camera Argument

Many understandably go with the initial gut reaction of not giving trump the attention he craves and that is good general narcissist advice. It also seems logical that cameras will help trump raise money, try his cases in the court of public opinion like he wants to and he will say things to try and trigger more violent attacks to intimidate witnesses, punish us for daring to hold him accountable, and for distractions when he is being publicly exposed as the fraud, traitor and feeble-minded narcissist he really is in court.

Anything Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and trump’s lawyers want also seems like something we should not want, and they want cameras allowed into the courtroom when he appears. They could just be saying that because it is what they were told to say, but since trump and his GOP sycophants can use court camera footage to raise lots of money off the cult, and that is the grifter priority, any true motivations beyond money and trump’s will are in question.

It is valid to be concerned that he will keep playing the ratings starved media as he has for years, by saying crazy and outrageous things they can spend a news cycle or two spinning until the next distraction and/or incitement he throws out there for profit-focused media to ride for more ratings. As former CBS CEO Les Moonves so famously said about trump’s Presidential run, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Some expressed concern a TV trial will suck up all our nation’s attention and he should be treated like any other defendant, but he is not any other defendant. This is the one President in U.S. history who refused to admit he lost an election, stole classified information for resale, incited an insurrection on the U.S. capitol in order to perform a coup so he could stay in power, and as many other things as he could get away with, because the man is a pathological narcissist. i.e. He can not help himself, which is why years later he still refuses to publicly admit he lost.

Pro-Camera Argument

Adam Schiff led over 30 House Democrats in signing a letter last week calling for the Judicial Conference to “explicitly authorize the broadcasting” of trump's election interference case and mishandling of classified records trials to be televised, “given the extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions and the need for transparency.”

“As the policymaking body for the federal courts, the Judicial Conference has historically supported increased transparency and public access to the courts’ activities. Given the historic nature of the charges brought forth in these cases, it is hard to imagine a more powerful circumstance for televised proceedings. If the public is to fully accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for it to witness, as directly as possible, how the trials are conducted, the strength of the evidence adduced and the credibility of witnesses.”

Indeed, trump has millions of followers who are no longer attached to reality so it is good for them to witness the facts and evidence and trump’s lies in response to the truth visually for reality to have any hope of sinking in. If he does take the stand, it will be very hard for him not to perjure himself, and the odds of him taking the stand goes up with cameras, because it will almost be impossible for his ego to give up the opportunity to have one of the highest rated TV “shows” in history.

Cult expert Steven Hassan said he was only able to escape his cult when he finally saw the leader was a liar in person, so it stands to reason those who can escape the trump cult need to see him unequivocally being a liar. One way to do that is to document on camera the endless lying, crime-ing and treason that was committed by a narcissist pretending to be the American President on TV. If these trials do not meet the necessary level of public interest to justify cameras in the courtroom, I do not know what does. It is only about the future of global democracy. Is it NBD or in the immortal words of Joe Biden, “This is a big f*cking deal,” and needs video documenting?

While it is true cameras will help trump raise money, try his cases in the court of public opinion and he will say things to try and trigger more violent attacks to intimidate witnesses, punish us for daring to hold him accountable, and for distractions, there is no doubt he and his minions will do all those things outside the court anyway, but when they make false claims of things that happened in court, there will be no video evidence to expose their obvious lies, which would be a missed opportunity.

“Simply put, we psychologically need to have several of these treasonous villains face severe justice so we can start believing American justice and rule of law are on the mend. We also need trump and his people to be held fully accountable so we can break some of his cultish ties that bind. If his fans can see him for the psychologically damaged man that he really is and not the messiah/martyr they want to make him out to be, that may break some of their unrealistic right-wing fever dreams.” - How the News is Psychologically Broken, and How to Fix It

Counter-Narcissism Bottom Lines

We can argue this back and forth but it just hit me this morning why cameras in a trump trial courtroom is a no-brainer. Without cameras, we would not know the obvious truth that some racist/narcissistic white women will call the police and make up how they are being threatened by innocent black folks who did absolutely nothing to them. Without cameras, we would not know for sure that Derek Chauvin murdered gentle giant George Floyd by placing his knee on Floyd’s neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds causing a lack of oxygen, and thus killing him. Chauvin's murder trial was broadcast live on television. trump’s attempted murder of American democracy should easily meet the same public interest criteria.

In other words, in the 2020s world, the Bottom Line is if there isn’t a video of it, it didn’t happen. At least the who, what, why and how it happened can be completely disputed and fabricated into “they said, they said,” to no resolution. Lying about the truth is a game trump has been playing and winning his entire life, because he had resources and few can conceive of how completely conscienceless and shameless he and those around him are.

Thankfully, it looks like E. Jean Carroll’s years of perseverance in holding him accountable has finally come through. It is practically the first time in who knows how long he has been held accountable for anything, but he will just pay her when forced but will continue to deny everything, like always.

It is actually not a thought out strategy, it is a pathological narcissist’s twisted pathology. That is why the final meltdown should be one for the record books, because the denial runs so, so, so deep. He cannot even entertain the idea that he could possibly lose or his mental house of cards might collapse on that thought, so when he gets hit with the reality of the trump Presidential prison library, he might even have a heart attack, or at least fake one.

Those who think we can just go about living our lives like everything is normal and let the legal system quietly do its job sounds a lot like the same naive institutionalists who thought the rules, regulations, traditions, guardrails, Mueller or even laws would eventually stop trump from doing whatever he could get away with. If something is malignant, it progressively gets worse, and it is almost statistically impossible for someone with his rogues gallery of personality disorders to ever improve or find effective treatment. He is who he is, has always been, and always will be.

So since we are dealing with a narcissist who lies like breathing, he and his “lawyers” will shamelessly say the opposite of every single thing that happened in the courtroom and without the public having the instant video evidence to refute such lies, trump and his various minions will be able to trigger more of his unhinged supporters and vulnerable conspiracists, just like he did on January 6th. Without video documentation, what really happened in the court will become lost in the psychopathic lies and manipulations of the guilty and the shameless playing the victim and blaming the victim.

The Narcissistic Collapse Needs Video Documenting  

When the walls finally close in on trump and the other narcissists that they are going to go to prison for perhaps the rest of their lives, we really need to capture on camera their “narcissistic collapse.” Thankfully, people like Thom Hartmann are raising awareness of the potential of the narcissistic collapse of trump’s supporters, because when a narcissist’s fantasy collapses, they cannot psychologically handle it, and the trump cult lives in a fantasy world the GOP and right-wing media created for them. Video of trump’s collapse or silence in the face of overwhelming evidence will help limit the national effects Hartmann warns of, because even to his fans, trump will not look manly collapsing.

Everyone in America has seen narcissistic collapse on the news many times, but since most of our corporate news is now entertainment instead of solutional and seems terrified of using psychology to explain supposedly unexplainable human behavior, you will almost never hear anyone in the news use the term. The next time you hear of someone doing the unconscionable act of murdering their family and then killing themselves, you will know that it is almost a certainty that this kind of tragedy was caused by some part of the murder’s narcissistic fantasy world collapsing.  

Narcissistic collapse can indeed be very dangerous for those in the vicinity of the narcissist and especially those they feel let them down. It has often been reported that when Hitler knew he had lost, he blamed the German people for failing him and wanted them to suffer more to punish them. Hitler also likely had Narcissistic Personality Disorder at a minimum. Would you want trump to have command over America’s military if he felt, “We the People” let him down again?

This prediction of trump’s narcissistic meltdown/collapse was of the slow motion variety and culminated on January 6th.

In fact, for years I predicted trump’s final meltdown would be one of biblical proportions and so unhinged that even many of his biggest fans would recognize he had a psychotic break from reality, because he would be yelling and screaming obscenities and insanities while frothing at the mouth as people in white coats secure the location by taking him away, as they slide him into a straight jacket. Well, at least that is what should have happened years ago in the Oval Office if the Cabinet members he hired had fulfilled their oath of defending America from all enemies, foreign and domestic, by invoking the 25th Amendment to remove an unfit President, because he was and always will be unfit psychologically as a malignant narcissist.

If we are to keep pushing and moving in positive and solutional directions, for the survival of our own democracy, and humankind’s freedom preservation itself, the trials of the most corrupt and narcissistic President in United States history must be televised. They do not need to cover our news wall to wall everyday but there does need to be a visual record of everything that is said and done in courtrooms by the “defendants,” witnesses and their lawyers, because we know trump and his minions  will lie about all of it loudly and repeatedly if not smacked down by video evidence they cannot refute.

Bottom Line Conclusion.

As CNI often repeats, the only things that stop narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths are firm barriers, and being exposed as a pathological narcissist on international TV is a firm barrier most of them need reminding of. In our 2020s world, if there isn’t video evidence, it didn’t happen. trump will lie about everything no matter what, so having video evidence to refute his lies about what happened in court is massively better than not having video to expose his pathological lies, and that is why it is so psychologically clear that there must be cameras in the trump trials.

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” - Louis Brandeis, 1913