Trump’s name-calling could have a negative effect on young Americans: “We are normalizing bullying”

Being president of the United States comes with the highest level of responsibility. As the leader of the nation, and the most powerful person in the world, people look up to the person who resides in the White House, and that person serves as role models for the young and old alike.

However, therapists warn that the normalization of name-calling, mean spiritedness and othering practiced by President Donald Trump and his administration is having a trickle-down effect on society as a whole. That it is sending the message that it is okay to behave badly, to treat other people with disrespect and goes contrary to what the majority of people have tried to teach their children before his rise to the highest position in America.

“We are normalizing bullying”

When running against Trump in 2016, then-Democratic candidate for the presidency Hillary Clinton, at a private fund raiser, said that half of his supporters could be put into a "basket of deplorables." After the statement became public knowledge, she was widely condemned for making that generalization.

However, Trump consistently makes far more dehumanizing and belittling statements about specific people and wide swaths of the American population and encourages violence against journalists and opponents with little or no pushback. Furthermore, some even condone what he says trying to use the pathetic excuse that the other side is doing the same.

“At the end of the day, at the core of it all, we are normalizing bullying,” warns Kristen Gingrich, a licensed clinical social worker in Maine. “[Trump’s] setting a precedent for the people in his country that it’s OK to treat people like this.”

While we as a nation have held previous people that have sat behind the Resolute Desk, and those that have vied to have the honor, to higher standards, with Trump accountability has gone out the window. “We are normalizing that it’s OK that you are mean to the people you don’t like or have different beliefs than you,” Gingrich told the Huffington Post.

“I really believe in some ways, his second election was based off of support of the bullying, and it really seemed to then only fan the flames for him and his followers and the entire administration at this point,” Brittany Escuriex, a licensed psychologist, somatic experiencing practitioner and co-owner of Empowered Healing Dallas, told the outlet. “He was actually rewarded for that behavior — so, why would he change that behavior?”

“If you’ve learned how to get your needs met out of anger, and it has always served you, well, of course, you’re going to keep doing that,” noted Gingrich.

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