Stephen H. Provost

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How Donald Trump took America hostage in 12 steps

What would you get if you had Starbucks without the coffee? Or Microsoft without the software? Imagine if you drove up to a McDonald’s, saw those big golden arches, and ordered yourself a Big Mac, but heard:

“Sorry, we don’t serve that.”

You’d be baffled, but maybe you’d ask, “What else do you have on the menu?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s right.”

“Then, what are you selling?”

“The name.”

“Just the name?”

“That’s it. There’s no more famous name in the world, so that’s what we’re selling. Wanna give me a dollar?”

“Uh, no.”

What would you get if bought a can of Coke, but found out it was empty.

You’d have Donald Trump.

A lot of people, for a very long time, have been saying, “The emperor has no clothes.” But it’s the other way around: Trump’s a suit of clothes with no emperor, no nothing, inside.

All his life, he’s relied on other people for ideas — his father for real estate development, Mark Burnett for The Apprentice — and to do the heavy lifting for him: whether it’s underpaid undocumented workers on Trump Tower or ghostwriters to pen his books.

Well, I wrote a book, too, and I did it all by myself. It’s called Political Psychosis: How Trump Took America Hostage, and How to Take Our Power Back. You can get a paperback copy for just $8.95, an ebook for $4.95 (the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks), or read it on Kindle Unlimited for free.

Political Psychosis reveals how a man all but devoid of original thought and intellectual ability parlayed his only talent — a knack for bullying and conning others — into success and, ultimately, a seat in the Oval Office.

How did he do it? It’s really no mystery. That’s why I wrote the book.

Journalists, political scientists, and psychologists have spent years asking themselves how Donald Trump managed to take the American people captive. But the answers are right in front of their faces. This book spells them out, point by point, plainly and concisely.

In Political Psychosis, you’ll read about the 12 rules Trump followed to secure and retain his base’s devotion. You don’t need to ask him to find out what they are. Just watch him; listen to what he’s said. You’ll discover:

  • A man who’s not immoral, but amoral: He doesn’t care about what he fights for, as long as he wins.

  • A man whose life is built on an illusion and branding. On image, not substance. A modern-day snake oil salesman obsessed with preserving that image, because he’s deathly afraid of being exposed as the fraud he really is.

  • A man who depends entirely on others’ approval to validate him, because he’s never succeeded on his own. A man who’s substituted approval for achievement; who says he’s “self-made,” even though he’s the exact opposite.

  • A man so broken that no achievement is enough to provide him with the sense of self-worth he desperately craves.

  • A man who overcompensates for his own gross ignorance by claiming he knows everything about everything, from the military to the environment.

Here’s what Trump’s method tells us about him, and about ourselves. We can take our power back — from him and others like him — by exposing it for what it really is.

A man who’s lost touch with reality and demands that we do the same, to protect himself from the truth. A man whose entire time in the presidency can be summed up in two words.

Political psychosis.