The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

Staff, Wire Reports

Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2018 06:35 PM

OPED: Trump's Call To Hurting Military Wife Was Congresswoman's Chance For Attention And She Got It

Whenever there is controversy in stories circling in media, the trained psychology professional will look at motive. Motive can illuminate a lot when evidence is missing, and that is why even courts consider motive so strongly.

On President Trump's call to fallen soldier La David Johnson's wife, the president's motives are important...

Either the president called to wish the wife well, and to give her America's condolences, or the president called to antagonize a fallen soldier's wife.

When you consider the motive of the accuser, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., there is a long history of evidence that could be considered to point to her motive to bring down this president.

Logic dictates that the president wouldn't simultaneously make a call to console and hurt a grieving military wife. It simply doesn't make sense.
But more importantly, fame is a great motivator. Most Americans, if surveyed, would say that they have never heard of Congresswoman Wilson before now, despite her many attempts to throw outlandish accusations at President Trump. There is a history of attention-getting behavior that has not worked. (For instance, she has repeatedly called for Trump's impeachment and has called him mentally ill.)

For those desperately seeking attention, when their tactics to fill their appetite for attention don't work, they seldom give up. Ordinarily, they take it to a new level.

When the Congresswoman was privy to part of a conversation she could exploit for her well-documented purpose of getting attention on the back of the president, she may have seen this as her ticket to her fifteen minutes of fame.

Since she made the accusation that the president said that fallen soldier Johnson "knew what he signed up for" (as if somehow insinuating that he deserved death for his decision), she has had a lot of attention.

The only problem: The motivations don't add up in her favor.

Her history of desperate, attention-seeking tactics, using the president, present an illuminating case in favor of the president.

Logic dictates that the president wouldn't simultaneously make a call to console and hurt a grieving military wife. It simply doesn't make sense.

News media is adept at looking at the "what" in situations like that. For behavioral junkies like me, when one stops to look deeper, into the "why" of any situation, it almost always provides clarity.

Dr. Gina Loudon is a frequent commentator on the interplay of psychology and politics on FOX News properties. She is a member of the President's Media Advisory Board, and was a delegate to the National Republican Convention for Donald J. Trump. Her book, Mad Politics, is set to release before the Midterm elections. She offers frequent psychological, political, and social commentary.