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April 19, 2026- by Steven Greer
The term Trump Derangement Syndrome refers to the far-left becoming brainwashed into hating Trump ten years ago. They were Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Rob Reiner, Kathy Griffin, most people in academia, etc. Well, there is a new form of TDS and it is the mirror image of that.
I have experienced this Reverse TDS twice. People who were diehard Trump supporters (as I was) now refuse to admit that they were wrong and have turned off all rational thought. They are brainwashed in the opposite way. I have experienced this twice.
First, I had a lawyer friend in New York. We are no longer friends because my daily emails about the news were too much for her brain to comprehend. It was cognitive dissonance. She has recently enjoyed religion in church, but yet she cannot see that Trump is the antichrist.
The second example is my nice Midwestern neighbor. His baby boomer father would visit and I could tell that he was completely brainwashed by Fox News. The other day, the son, who is in his fifties, asked me about this Trump antichrist trend. He too gets his news from Fox and did not realize that many people former Trump supporters like Alex Jones have been calling Trump the Antichrist after the Orthodox Easter meme Trump posted (of himself being Jesus).
I normally would never have a discussion like that, but he was my neighbor and I could tell that he had some curiosity about what he might be missing out on. First, I was shocked at how little he knew about basic facts of the Iran war, etc. I had to go back and educate him. My facts were too much for him so he would filibuster and interrupt me. Their fragile egos cannot allow in conflicting facts.
Show them evidence and they literally scream or interrupt to protect their brains. Try to reason with them and they talk over you.
This is not random stubbornness. It is a well-documented psychological phenomenon. It has a name: cognitive dissonance, amplified by confirmation bias, the backfire effect, and identity-protective cognition.
- Cognitive dissonance is the extreme mental discomfort a person feels when new information directly contradicts a deeply held belief. The brain does not update the belief. Instead, it rejects the information so the discomfort goes away. That is exactly what happened with both the New York lawyer and my neighbor.
- Confirmation bias makes it worse. People only seek out, believe, and remember information that fits what they already think. Fox News or whatever single source they use becomes a perfect echo chamber that never challenges the core faith.
- The backfire effect kicks in when someone actually presents contradicting facts. Studies show that, especially on hot-button political or identity issues, the correction often makes the original false belief stronger. The person does not just dismiss the new data. They dig in harder.
Identity-protective cognition is the final layer. For these former Trump supporters, backing Trump stopped being a political opinion years ago. It became part of who they are: their tribe, their moral worldview, sometimes even their religious identity. Challenging that feels like a personal attack on their entire sense of self. So the brain protects the identity by any means necessary: denial, interruption, rage, or simply shutting down the conversation.
In short, the far-left has its version of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now, some on the MAGA right have developed the mirror image of TDS. The same psychological machinery runs in reverse. Both sides end up in the same place: brains turned off, facts rejected, tribe protected at all costs.