By Elayne Savage, PhD
© Can Stock Photo / Guingm
"Get rid of her"
"Take her out"
President Trump’s words were captured on tape demanding the removal of Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
"Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."
"Get rid of her"
"Take her out"
Sure sounds to me like when gangsters order a 'hit.'
In a phone conversation, President Trump told President Zelensky that Ambassador Yovanovitch was “bad news” and was "going to go through some things."
Then, by a call from the director general of the State Department's foreign service, the ambassador was suddenly recalled to Washington:
"This is about your security. You need to come home immediately. You need to come home on the next plane.”
It seems to me this sounds strikingly familiar to President Trump’s recent gangster-speak tweet :
“Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country.”
Could “not paid the price yet” be considered a threat to security in the same way as "going to go through some things” turned out to be?
The pattern seems to be the President's way of lashing out and threatening personal security when he feels personally attacked or betrayed.
Scary Talk Brings Up Scary Memories
The sound of these words makes me cringe. These sinister comments bring up a memory for me that I try to keep hidden away.
Maybe my experience is why I'm super sensitive to mob-talk about killing someone.
Once I heard a similar directive given, and it was very scary. I can never forget that day.
I was sitting with someone I know well and overheard him using these kinds of words in a phone call.
As we were chatting his phone rang. "I'm sorry, I have to take this call — it's business” he apologized.
He listened intently and asked a few questions. Then his tone grew steely: "Well — off him!"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. So in my naive, rationalizing and protective universe I convinced myself he must have been joking around.
Only later did I connect the dots: Oh, I get it. This is Mob talk! "Off him" = "Take him out."
And more dots: His business happened to be gambling.
OMG. I had just witnessed an order to kill someone. It was chilling!
I guess I pushed this memory into the recesses of my mind because I honestly was not able to deal with such a frightening thought.
Once in a while something will remind me, and I try to push it away again.
Yesterday I came face to face with the memory when I heard the recording of our president's directive to remove Ambassador Yovanovitch:
"Get rid of her"
"Take her out."
I couldn’t escape it this time. These gangster-laced words brought all the yucky feelings of that day back to me.
The day I overheard someone order a murder.
The day I was filled with fear.
The day I needed a hot shower to wash away how befouled I felt.
Writing about this helps a little. Thanks for listening . . .
Until next month,
Elayne
The contents of the tape regarding Ambassador Yovanovitch were first reported by ABC.
You can listen to the entire tape here. The dialogue I described above starts at the 39 minute mark.
By the way, President Trump’s tweet describing Adam Schiff as “a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man“ could be considered an very good example of the psychological projection that he so often displays
I often blog about projection. Here is a description:
– Psychological projection is mistakenly imagining certain traits exist in the other person when we cannot acknowledge them in ourselves. This is because they make us uncomfortable because they are emotionally unacceptable to us. In other words, features that we attribute to (others) are actually disowned parts of ourselves.
Projection is how some people deal with all kinds of unacknowledged, unacceptable feelings including anger, fears, insecurities, aggressiveness, independence, badness, vulnerabilities, competence, or dependency.
© Elayne Savage, PhD
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
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