How President Trump’s character is being attacked…by the numbers.

By definition, “Character assassination is a deliberate and sustained process that attempts to destroy the credibility and reputation of a person.”

The perpetrators of character assassinations employ a mix of open and covert methods to achieve their goals, such as raising false accusations, planting and fostering rumors, manipulating information, exaggeration, creating misleading half-truths, or manipulating facts to present a desired picture of the targeted person in an attempt to tarnish that person’s reputation.

Here is the character assassination playbook by the numbers:

• Attack their expertise, questioning their qualifications or experience
• Criticize their physical appearance or dress
• Comment on their inability to make a good argument
• Point out their inexperience and junior status
• Attack their values as being contrary to social norms
• Interpret a minor error as major
• Attach them to other discredited people

Does any of this sound like the treatment President Trump has been receiving from the democrats and their friends, the biased mainstream media? Of course it does.  “The swamp” is just so obvious these days.  They have no interest in even pretending to be the littlest bit fair anymore.

“In practice, character assassination may involve doublespeak, spreading of rumors, innuendo or deliberate misinformation on topics relating to the subject’s morals, integrity, and reputation. It may involve spinning information that is technically true, but that is presented in a misleading manner or is presented without the necessary context. For example, it might be said that a person refused to pay any income tax during a specific year, without saying that no tax was actually owed per the tax laws.”

In other words, the truth of the allegations is irrelevant. The only thing that is important is the promotion of the negative perception in the minds of the public.

Perhaps the most common form of character assassination is the spread of allegations that the person is a liar. I’ve never heard that said about President Trump.  Have you?

Other common themes may include allegations about members of the candidate’s family, bad spousal relationships, or a lack of respect by colleagues.

Another theme claims that the person routinely engages in disturbing, socially unacceptable behavior, such as sexual deviancy. The person may also be portrayed as holding beliefs widely considered despicable within society, such as supporting racism or other forms of bigotry. This one is especially liked by the democrats and the biased mainstream media!

Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1991 and Herman Cain’s run for president in 2012 are excellent examples of prior character assassination.

“In a totalitarian regime, for example: various kingdoms, North Korea, Cuba under Castro, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and The Soviet Union, “The effect of a character assassination driven by an individual is not equal to that of a state-driven campaign. The state-sponsored destruction of reputations, fostered by political propaganda and cultural mechanisms, can have more far-reaching consequences. One of the earliest signs of a society’s compliance to loosening the reins on the perpetration of crimes with total impunity is when a government favors or directly encourages a campaign aimed at destroying the dignity and reputation of its adversaries, and the public accepts its allegations without question. The mobilization toward ruining the reputation of adversaries is the prelude to the mobilization of violence in order to annihilate them. Official dehumanization has always preceded the actual physical assault of the victims.”

Do you remember someone saying, “I’ve actually thought about blowing up the White House?” I’m sure you do.

Do you also remember the biased mainstream media or the political left denouncing this comment?  I’m sure you don’t, because they didn’t.

And there have been other dehumanizing remarks made about President Trump by various democrats, Hollywood, and other left-leaning individuals, while the biased mainstream media chooses to look the other way.

Note: Portions of this article come from information provided by The International Society for the Study of Character Assassination (ISSCA). Yes, there is such a thing!  The ISSCA specializes in the academic study and research of how character attacks and assassinations have been executed in both history and during contemporary times.  The ISSCA formed in 2011, and the group included historians, political scientists, and political psychologists from around the world.