There’s an old saying that when you point a finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back at you.

It’s what psychologists refer to as projection—the act of accusing others of the very misconduct one is engaged in.

While politicians of all political stripes are guilty of projection, Donald Trump, aptly dubbed a “master of projection,” could teach a master class in accusing others of wrongdoing of which he is guilty.

Trump has repeatedly framed himself as a victim of corruption while weaponizing the machinery of government for personal, political, and financial gain. He rails against censorship while threatening journalists, blacklisting law firms, and punishing dissenters. He decries political persecution while using federal power to retaliate against critics and whistleblowers, condemning ‘rigged systems’ even as he stacks courts, rewrites rules, and demands loyalty over law.

Nowhere is this hypocrisy more evident than in Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign—a slogan that metastasized into a violent assault on democratic norms and culminated in a riot when Trump’s supporters forced their way into the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes in an election Trump lost.

Five years after January 6, we find ourselves navigating a strange and dangerous new reality:

Stop the steal, indeed.

Trump’s second term has become a painful lesson in what it looks like when a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is stolen out from under them—and replaced by a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

This is not governance.

It is projection weaponized, retaliation normalized, and Orwellian doublespeak elevated to official policy.

This pattern of projection becomes most dangerous when it targets the democratic process itself.

Trump’s obsession with election fraud masks a quieter, more consequential theft: the deliberate manipulation of the electoral system.

While endlessly warning that elections are “rigged,” Donald Trump and his allies have worked aggressively to redraw voting districts, restructure election rules, and manipulate the electoral map ahead of the 2026 midterms—not to........

© Eurasia Review