Gaslighting America

March 12, 2018
Carpenter, a former congressional staffer and self-declared “never Trump” conservative, scathingly revisits the 2016 presidential election and first year of Donald Trump’s presidency in a convincing attempt to pinpoint the methods behind Trump’s rise to power. Calling the methods gaslighting, after Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 melodrama Gas Light, in which a man’s lies gradually convince his wife that she is going insane, Carpenter identifies five distinct gaslighting steps: “stake a claim”; “advance and deny”; “create suspense” by announcing forthcoming evidence; “discredit the opponent” with personal attacks; and “win” by self-proclamation. The author uses a plethora of examples to build her case, from Trump’s famous public questioning of the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, to a personally relevant episode in which Trump and his campaign pushed an unsubstantiated National Enquirer story rumoring an affair between Carpenter and her former boss, Sen. Ted Cruz. As a counter to these tactics, the author closes with tips to avoid succumbing to Trump’s strategy (“try to add some substance to your media diet”) and a plea for politicians to take back the narrative with more positive, truthful versions of gaslighting tactics, such as to “get people talking.” For right-leaning readers aghast at the current state of politics, Carpenter’s book will serve as a beacon of hope.