Art of the DARVO
(or: Trump REALLY Wants To Be Seen As A Victim - of the Legal System)
For those of you who don’t know, a psychologist named Jennifer Freyd came up with a really interesting acronym all the way back in 1997: DARVO.
DENY. ATTACK. REVERSE VICTIM/OFFENDER.
As Freyd herself puts it on her website,
“DARVO refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrongdoing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior…The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim -- or the whistle blower -- into an alleged offender. This occurs, for instance, when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of "falsely accused" and attacks the accuser's credibility and blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.”
Or, if you want a more succinct definition, here’s President Garrison on South Park walking Randy Marsh through the concept:
Generally, DARVO is a concept applied against people who have been harmed in some way, whether it be sexual assault, a violent attack, both, you get the idea. But when the abusive person in that situation is accused… they try to pull an Uno Reverse on the person harmed. It happens a lot to women, like E Jean Carroll, who Donald Trump was found by a court to have raped and defamed - and then proceeded to defame her some more.
But sometimes… it happens to the entire fucking country. Like in the case of Donald Trump’s March 22 presidential memorandum titled “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court.”
THE MEMORANDUM:
“Lawyers and law firms that engage in actions that violate the laws of the United States or rules governing attorney conduct must be efficiently and effectively held accountable,” Trump’s ghostwriter, uh, ghostwrites. “Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity.”
The memorandum then cites examples of the Steele dossier, which we discussed recently on here, as an example of lawyers exhibiting “grossly unethical misconduct” before diving into a full-on attack against the immigration system and alleging that the immigration bar is coaching clients to, quote, “conceal their past or lie about their circumstances when asserting their asylum claims, all in an attempt to circumvent immigration policies enacted to protect our national security and deceive the immigration authorities and courts into granting them undeserved relief.”
That’s when Trump shows his hand completely:
“Unfortunately, far too many attorneys and law firms have long ignored these requirements when litigating against the Federal Government or in pursuing baseless partisan attacks. To address these concerns, I hereby direct the Attorney General to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States or in matters before executive departments and agencies of the United States.”
…
“If the Attorney General identifies misconduct that may warrant additional action, such as filing frivolous litigation or engaging in fraudulent practices, the Attorney General is directed to recommend to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, additional steps that may be taken, including reassessment of security clearances held by the attorney, termination of any contract for which the relevant attorney or law firm has been hired to perform services, or any other appropriate actions.”
So, what exactly are these alleged pieces of “frivolous litigation” and “fraudulent practices” Trump is referring to?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
It’s clearly the executive orders the Trump administration is trying to get passed that are being challenged on a near-daily basis in court. According to the Just Security Trump admin litigation tracker, there are over 130 (135 as of today - and according to sone sources, as many as 150!) legal cases against the Trump administration relating to his executive orders - ranging from his mass attacks on the immigration system to spending freezes, all the way down to the destruction of DEI initiatives.
Thankfully, as reported by the New York Times, 46 of the rulings have led to temporary pauses of Trump’s plans:
“Trial court judges have issued temporary orders that block the unilateral firing of civil servants, the access that Elon Musk’s team has enjoyed to sensitive agency data, the relocation of transgender women inmates to men’s prisons, the pursuit of immigrants inside houses of worship, and the freezing of up to $3 trillion in federal funding to the states,” the Times writes.
But it is worth mentioning that these are, in fact, TEMPORARY pauses - the fight is not finished JUST yet. According to the Washington Post, former Justice Department staffer Vanita Gupta stated that she had, “both sued and defended the government with equal vigor. This presidential memorandum attacks the very foundations of our legal system by threatening and intimidating litigants who aim to hold our government accountable to the law and the Constitution.”
It should come as no surprise that people aren’t exactly stoked about this - with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund announcing in a statement that 22 civil rights organizations ranging from the ACLU to the SPLC to End Citizens United have banded together to create their own superhero franchise to condemn the memorandum, That’s right: they got Josie AND the Pussycats on this one.
“Yesterday’s memorandum from President Trump to the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security regarding legal actions against the federal government is the latest in a rash of statements and actions intended to chill dissent, avoid accountability, and weaponize the government to attack opponents of this administration and its lawless actions,” the LDF wrote in the statement. “Issued a week after Mr. Trump gave an unprecedented and politically-charged speech at the Department of Justice, the memorandum compromises the agency’s independence by calling for investigations of, and threatening sanctions against, lawyers and law firms who bring ‘frivolous claims’ against the federal government. It also mentions one attorney by name.”
Every day in Trump’s America is more aggressive than the last, no matter who is willing to fight and how. We have officially crossed the rubicon into a place where he is now actively targeting lawyers from upholding the law, which is… kinda their job. It’s in the name. What’s truly alarming is how possible what he’s describing in the memorandum FEELS - he’s seeking out the cracks along the walls of democracy, inserting wedges in each, and seeing just how flimsy the foundations truly are.
And when it comes to the walls currently being reinforced by the (very partisan) Supreme Court, it’s a bit of a crapshoot on what will and will not be upheld.
Yet this is what I mean when I call what Trump is doing DARVO. In virtually every legal case, Trump and his administration are the clear aggressors that are looking to eliminate rights and protections from millions of Americans for increasingly cruel reasons. Since the law doesn’t seem to be on his side, he’s decided it’s time to attack the law.
“No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States,” he wrote in his own echo chamber the day before the memorandum dropped. “Only Crime and Chaos would result. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump denies that what he’s doing is illegal, and consistently positions his actions as being for a greater good, “making America great again.” He uses the power of the presidency to attack his opponents. And he portrays himself as a victim of an unfair smear campaign by “radical leftists.” Will Trump’s DARVO tactics work in courtrooms? Will they work in the Supreme Court?
THE GOOD NEWS:
Our time on Substack hasn’t always allowed us to dust off the banana shirts and relish in a bit of the good news, but 46 frozen executive orders is GREAT news - and many more will likely follow suit.
For example, one of the most noteworthy challenges Trump has faced surrounded his attempted end to birthright citizenship, something we discussed he would have a little trouble with seeing as it’s part of a pesky little thing called the Constitution. Many federal judges have frozen the order, though the Trump admin is taking it over to those alleged constitutional minds at the Supreme Court for further review. There are also the many attacks on trans folk committed by the Trump administration. His military ban on trans people? Blocked by a federal judge on March 18. The proposed cutting of federal funds like Medicaid to aid with transitioning? Blocked.
And in a promising sign that the Supreme Court may also find some of these executive actions to be a bit overreaching, it was ruled that Trump’s 90-day pause on foreign aid was to NOT go through, with Trump being ordered to follow a district court order to pay out $2 billion or so in foreign aid funds.
Still, it’s worth paying attention to a few of the legal battles going on right now - given that the victories right now are temporary, there’s more work to be done there… but for now, we can pay attention to the cases that are still in their early days, like the suits challenging Trump’s rulings on sanctuary cities and the restoration of the “Remain in Mexico” policy. But more importantly, we need to pay close attention to the legal battles happening in relation to The Chaos Emerald and his shitty memecoin group cosplaying as a government agency.
As Erik Larson and Zoe Tillman put it for Bloomberg:
“States, privacy advocates and unions that challenged Elon Musk and his budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency team have had mixed results. Some judges have temporarily limited DOGE employees’ access to Americans’ personal data held by departments. But in other cases, the Musk team was allowed to continue reviewing secure information. A Washington judge denied a request that would give DOGE access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau records, at least for now. And the Trump administration continues to fight restrictions. It asked an appeals court to block disclosures about Musk’s role and threatened to all but shut down the Social Security Administration after a judge blocked DOGE’s access to the agency’s computer systems. The administration is also fighting suits challenging DOGE access to Treasury payments data, with limited success. A New York judge largely blocked DOGE’s access but said the administration could regain it by giving the employees proper training and security clearances. These cases are testing the standard allowing presidents to assign non-Senate confirmed aides to dig into Americans’ data across the government.”
We’re in uncharted waters when it comes to Muskkk and his band of misfits who put “third place finisher in a memory competition” in their resumes. Not only is DOGE not actually a government body, we’re not even really sure what the hell it is, to the point that there’s an entire section on its Wikipedia page regarding its ambiguity. It’s going to be necessary to pay attention to whatever’s coming, since it will likely set in place a precedent for how we can deal with something like this if it ever happens again.
Speaking of which, you ever wonder what it would be like to grab a beer with George Washington, John and Samuel Adams, and the rest of those blokes who signed the Declaration of Independence and you tried to explain DOGE to them? I feel like a lot of the world’s most obnoxious commenters would CHOMP at the bit to #drag the founding fathers for not anticipating the rise of DOGE, but that feels like a bit of a trap to me. Like you know those really horrible times at a party when you bring up But I’m A Cheerleader, maybe you quote it a little, and you’re met with either awkward, soft laughter or - worse - deafening silence? And then you have to explain But I’m a Cheerleader, AND explain it in a way that doesn’t make it sound like it’s making a joke out of something horrifying? Soon, you find yourself explaining a joke and that’s when you realize you’ve lost the plot, AND the loyalty of your friends, completely.
That’s what explaining DOGE to the uninitiated is like: explaining an obscure queer cult classic to your very straight friends.
Look, friends. Things are quite bad right now, but not in the same way they were bad on Day 1 of this shitshow. It would be very easy, and very understandable, to fall into despair and assume that the Trump administration has cheated the system for itself in a way that will doom us all. But that would be forgetting one very important thing: even if the Trump administration is exhibiting textbook DARVO right now, we are in the very privileged position of having a lot of very smart and dedicated people fighting to make sure these orders cannot and do not stick.
I’m not going to take a definitive swing here since we don’t know whether we’re being thrown a strike or a ball right now. But what I can say is that in Trump’s attempt to follow the Bannon playbook and “flood the zone with shit,” he seems to have forgotten that we’ve done this before. To this extent? No. But the Heritage Foundation, as meticulous as their Project 2025 playbook may have seemed, simply are not the President - and they certainly aren’t (most of) his very inept, very “in-line” administration.
And when even Chief Justice Roberts has to make a public statement that the Trump admin is going a bit too far, I think it’s safe to say we can and should be troubled. But I also think it might be worth considering that some of the people we were most afraid of siding with the oppressor are seeing the DARVO for what it is, too.
He wants to be a victim so that he can continue to sow divisiveness and division. By Marginalizing others, even his victims, he achieves his results. Time for a brief civics lesson. https://thistleandmoss.com/p/the-denial-of-opportunity-creates
Trump is the literal embodiment of DARVO. I feel like in dictionaries there should just be a picture of him for an example.