Mirroring Reality in the Palace of Narcissus
How Trump’s prophets both invert the truth and model Trump’s psyche
We are in a completely unprecedented moment for the US federal government. Unlike the first Trump term which occasionally allowed objective reality to leak through, this time is different.
As I described in my theoretical framework, we have entered epistemological totalitarianism, where reality itself is under the control of the system—in this case the U.S. federal government.
Trump’s emissaries, including the youngest press secretary in American history, Karoline Leavitt, are trying to do two things at once:
factually invert the truth,
and model to Trump’s clinging base how he is feeling, so they can feel it too—and imitate it.
This performance by Leavitt is effectively Trump’s ego saying right out loud, “I’m running out of narcissistic supply and therefore I want a new toy to feel better. Get me a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Leavitt:
“The president has now ended conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia. This means President Trump has brokered on average about one peace deal or ceasefire per month during his six months in office. It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.“
Every word is false, or at best embarrassingly exaggerated. The US was there when Thailand and Cambodia did a cease-fire, and Trump bullied them with tariffs, but it was led by ASEAN and the fighting has already restarted. The deal between Rwanda and the Congo is about temporarily quelling the violence to get to the minerals—which is why Erik Prince’s paramilitary is there, to “secure” them.
None of the other stuff happened at all, except Serbia and Kosovo, kinda, in 2020. Trump was literally just a witness to it, and it had nothing to do with peace. It was an economic normalization agreement that accomplished nothing.
Leavitt’s “gift” is to be able to mirror Trump’s psyche, completely invert reality, and deliver it with a straight face and a cross. She is a mimetic superspreader for the golden Palace of Narcissus, a mirror of Trump’s crumbling psychology, and a flashing red light for the rest of us.
Mimetic synchrony is the final phase of brainwashing in which individuals no longer evaluate reality independently but instead attune their perception to the emotional and cognitive signals of a dominant figure or system.
As another example of mimetic synchrony, here is the actual Director of Intelligence on a known Russian propagandist’s podcast, accusing Hillary Clinton of treason by inverting reality and replacing it with Donald Trump’s feelings. This is narcissistic projection mirrored through the government.
BENNY JOHNSON: It was actually Hillary Clinton and the establishment at the FBI using foreign intelligence in a treasonous act against our own government. Am I getting that correctly?
TULSI GABBARD: You are. Yes. And the interesting thing here is again, I want to point back to the documents. We released because people can go and read for themselves. Go to ODNI.gov there. You can click through. You can read the documents for themselves. This is not my view or my opinion or my interpretation.
Here is the document that Tulsi Gabbard is so deeply concerned with erasing from history and replacing with Trump’s DARVO. It was agreed by the entire intelligence community, including those run by career Republicans, that of course the Russians interfered on Donald Trump’s behalf in 2016.
In her interview, Gabbard asserts that the U.S. intelligence community assessed “Russia had neither the intent nor the capability” to interfere in the 2016 election, and that the 2017 intelligence assessment ordered by President Obama was a politically motivated fabrication engineered by Clapper and Brennan. This is a complete inversion of the documented historical record as anyone can see.
The January 2017 ICA, produced by the CIA, NSA, and FBI with unanimous high-confidence findings (except NSA’s moderate confidence on one subpoint), concluded that Russia did interfere, specifically to harm Hillary Clinton and help Trump. Numerous independent investigations—including the Mueller Report and bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee reports—confirmed this. Gabbard presents this well-documented conclusion as a hoax, and instead reframes the official assessment as the actual act of treason. This is not reinterpretation—it is total reversal, where the investigators become the criminals and the perpetrator becomes the victim.
What does mimetic synchrony look like among Trump’s cult? As soon as Tulsi Gabbard released the new “DNI drop” of ancillary documents which show no conspiracy, no disinformation, no nothing, this is what happened on Twitter.
Trump’s boiling, unreleased rage, as expressed through Tulsi Gabbard, was instantly and contagiously mirrored.
Finally, in the White House Briefing Room, Leavitt announced that Donald Trump is going to effectively tear down the East Wing for “remodernization” including a gargantuan golden ballroom seating 650 people—at the low, low cost of $200 million taxpayer dollars.
Note the money spent on this would have saved the lives of 14 million people projected to die from cuts to PEPFAR and USAID Emergency Food programs, many times over.
This monstrosity is pure narcissism, pure symbolism, and a deep sign of his descent into collapse.
Gold as Psychopolitical Iconography
Trump’s use of gold is a pathological signature:
Gold-plated fixtures, furniture, toilets, elevators—they’re not decorations; they’re symbols of narcissistic grandeur and domination.
Turning the White House gold is a literal attempt to overwrite democratic iconography (restraint, classical balance, national symbolism) with personal megalomania.
Destruction of the East Wing = Erasure of Institutional Memory
The East Wing of the White House houses:
The First Lady’s offices
Social Secretary
Visitor entrance for official state functions
Historical infrastructure supporting civic ritual and continuity
To demolish the East Wing is to symbolically erase:
Feminine influence
Historical restraint
Domestic diplomacy
Institutional continuity
This is ego-projection via demolition. The functional architecture of American governance is being torn down and replaced by a golden palace of solipsism.
A Regime Architecture of Imperialist Narcissism
What you’re seeing is not remodeling. It’s imperialist narcissism.
Compare to:
Saddam Hussein’s gold-plated palaces
Ceaușescu’s People’s Palace in Bucharest
Hitler’s plans for Germania (Speer’s imperial fascist capital)
Putin’s $1B Black Sea palace
In each case:
The leader’s pathology gets written into national space
Architecture becomes ego
Democracy or reality is replaced by symbolic domination
Governmental Decompensation in Physical Form
As I wrote, governmental decompensation is the collapse of institutional reality-testing, where state structures no longer process facts but instead mirror the delusions of a dominant pathological figure.
Trump has fused his own pathology to the machinery of the U.S. government.
Now he has fused his pathology to the physical building of the White House. It is the spatial extension of his ego.
As I have been warning, this kind of cognitive decompensation is a one-way ticket to the fifth phase of narcissist collapse—which is rupture of the system itself. In order to free himself from the mental anguish of the ego wound being created and aggravated by the Epstein scandal, he will try to destroy the system that is delivering it. Namely, the First Amendment. I see three major potential rupture scenarios possible in the short term:
He effectuates an arrest of his political enemies without due process, ie. “Lock Her Up”
He pardons Ghislaine Maxwell and attempts to use her to reverse blame onto Democrats
He tries to end “Russiagate” once and for all by getting into a conflict with Putin—to prove “Russia, Russia, Russia” was a hoax all along.
Speaking of “dangerous territory,” I don’t mean to be bleak, but it is a psychological certainty that unless he gets some kind of relief from this Epstein situation, he will continue to spiral down the drain and create a national rupture. He has no choice and no limits. And his cult will just spiral down with him.
Katie, bar the door.
If you are able to help me continue my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. It really means a lot. Thank you!
Here are a few benefits to upgrading:
Live Zoom call each Sunday
Substack Live AMA every week, video posted for paid subscribers
Ability to comment and access all content
Wonderful, supportive community
Helping independent journalism fill in the gaps for our failing media
Thank you for reading and sharing my work. Grateful for your support.
If you’d like to help me with expenses, here is my DonorBox. 💙
If you’d like to help with my legal fees: stopmikeflynn.com.
My podcast is @radicalizedpod & YouTube — Livestream is Thursdays at 4PM PT.
Bluesky 🦋: jim-stewartson
Threads: jimstewartson
Tiktok: @jimstewartson
I have been in construction all my working life. I’m 70. This destruction of OUR White House is an abomination. Does it have to be approved by Congress? Is there anything we can do to stop him?
Architecture, and public buildings, are connections to our past. God I’m exhausted by all this. I’m sorry
It is heartbreaking and agonising to see these liars and moral monsters in power. It is a necessity to read the truth about them and their actions. That is what you present so clearly, Jim. Thank you for this great service.