Before BuzzFeed Editor Ben Smith published his smug Wednesday memo in which he defended BuzzFeed writers who want to call Trump a “mendacious racist” on social media, he interviewed a renowned psychoanalyst who told him that Trump is a “real American nationalist” with an “observable… love of his country.”
Stanley Renshon, “a practicing psychoanalyst who also has a Ph.D. in political science and teaches at the City University of New York Graduate Center,” has written books that are, according to Smith, “a clockwork feature of American public life: fascinating and the product of serious intellectual labor.”
Smith said he “needed a bit of expertise” about Trump, so he contacted Renshon, who—lo and behold—also “shares with Trump a skepticism about immigration.”
“He appears to be a real American nationalist with an observable, if bombastic, love of his country,” Renshon told Smith last week. “Obviously a love of country is inconsistent with real narcissism, where there is no room for love of anybody or anything but yourself.”
Renshon added regarding Trump, “I think he genuinely feels like the country is going to hell, and I think he genuinely feels he can do something about it.”
In his Wednesday memo, Smith wrote that is “entirely fair to call [Trump] a mendacious racist, as the politics team and others have reported clearly and aggressively. He’s out there saying things that are false, and running an overtly anti-Muslim campaign.”
Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak observed that “the broader problem is that Smith’s memo would have a chilling effect in any company. It makes clear that defending Donald Trump is to be equated with racism. In fact, Smith does not even seem to acknowledge that some Buzzfeed employees might have a favorable opinion of Trump, and his memo tends to preclude that possibility in future.”
Pollak also wrote that “what is particularly interesting is that Smith would publish this memo. Behind the self-righteous moral preening lies a stark admission of political intolerance.”