As advocates and activists around the globe hold events to recognize October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it’s worth acknowledging what we have recognized since 2016. Just like Vice President Harris, we know Donald Trump’s type.
Domestic violence, also called intimate partner violence, is an international phenomenon that in the U.S. is experienced by 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men. The most recognized form of domestic violence is physical violence, but physical violence is often embedded in broader coercive and controlling behavior. The coercive behavior—emotional abuse, isolation, threat and false promises and bullying—is what most victims say is the most harmful and powerful, in part because it can be so confusing and/or invisible to the outside world. The braggadocio and attention lure you in, and the threats of harm, false promises and insults that erode your self worth can cause you to stay.
As someone who has worked in the field of intimate partner violence for 30 years, Donald Trump has felt familiar to me—and not in a good way—since the campaign leading up to his 2016 election. His belittling of opponents, his savior-like language and his implicit (and explicit) threats of harm for those who are not loyal to him sound exactly like my former clients’ partners writ large.
In abusive relationships, the abusive partner is often initially charismatic and attentive, seducing partners with professions of love and protection that demand loyalty and obedience in return.
When you are good, you are in a wonderful romance. (“Women love me.”) When you step out of line, you are crazy and no one will believe anything you say. (“Kamala Harris is mentally disabled.”) If you leave, you’ll be sorry. (“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”)
Another prevalent abusive tactic is gaslighting—convincing you that you are not seeing what is right in front of you. I will never forget a client I had years ago, who came to me to seek an order of protection against her former boyfriend. The night before she came to court, her ex had broken into her ground floor apartment, and pushed her up against the wall, yelling into her face that she couldn’t leave him because he loved her. He screamed at her until she agreed that they’d stay together—it was the only way to get him to get out.
The next day she went to work at her job in a large office building. Late morning the front desk rang up and told her that her husband had just dropped off flowers. Confused (she didn’t have a husband), she went downstairs to find an enormous bouquet with an engagement ring lodged in the base of the flower display, along with a huge assortment of balloons shooting up from the base. She immediately turned around and came to court for protection.
She had withstood the abuse before. She was familiar with his refusal to take no for an answer. But the peculiar extravagance of the ring and bouquet as sequel to an abusive incident was what made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. It was not connected to her reality.
Donald Trump regularly traffics in hyperbole and gaslighting. (He has proclaimed that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.) He also states things as fact that are patently untrue. (“I am going to build a wall on our Southern border and make Mexico pay for it.”)
Trump’s behavior also mirrors an abuser’s ability to distort information and make it seem like the truth. His exaggerations and lies are stated with such conviction, and reference to outside sources (“people are saying,” “I saw it on TV”), that they can seem persuasive. He gaslights by saying things that go against what we’ve seen with our own eyes.
To take the most obvious example, during his debate with Joe Biden, he said that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol involved a “relatively small” group of people who were “in many cases ushered in by the police,” despite video evidence that thousands of his supporters were outside the Capitol that day and hundreds broke in, many of them beating and injuring law enforcement officers resulting in more than 1,400 people being charged with federal crimes.
When my client and I had finished drafting a petition for an order of protection (which had to be based on the breaking into her home, not the bouquet), she was going to home to get lunch until court re-opened after lunch. I had a bad feeling—I felt that her ex might have wanted to watch her reaction to receiving his exuberant gift and might then have followed her to court. I asked a court officer to escort her to her car, and sure enough, when they got there, her ex was waiting for her, leaning against her car. She was right to recognize that inflated gift as a threat with a bow on top.
Many abusive heterosexual men have traditional views of gender roles. They see their role as protector and breadwinner, and the woman’s role as there to support. Violations of those norms are not tolerated. In fact, when physical violence is used, it is usually to reenforce the rules of the road. My client’s ex assaulted her because she had the temerity to leave him. Vice President Mike Pence was left to the mercy of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists because he refused to endorse a lie that would have returned Trump to power.
Sometimes abusers have former partners who are brave enough to speak out about their abusive behavior. If that spooks the new partner at all, it’s easy to just paint the former partner as crazy. “She’ll say anything.” “She’s a whack job.”
In this month when we recognize the scourge of domestic violence, I wish I could loan my domestic violence advocacy-colored glasses to the voting public. Through those glasses, you can recognize threats and coercion for what they are. You can appreciate the nature of a person who promises protection and punishes disloyalty. This month, I invite you all to see the world through those glasses, to honor people who have suffered at the hands of their partners, and to benefit from the hard lessons they have learned.
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