Friday the 13th was an unlucky day for the Trump Organization as it was fined $1.6 million

I have another tale of woe after Bed Bath & Beyond facing bankruptcy, a tale of the Retail Apocalypse for Friday the 13th, but this time it's for an entity that deserves it more. Watch ABC News report Trump Organization fined $1.6M for tax fraud.

The Trump organization received a maximum $1.6 million in fines by a federal judge Friday after being convicted of tax fraud.

The Trump Organization claiming that this case is a politically motivated witch hunt reminds me of what I wrote in Projection is the Right's favorite defense mechanism more than a decade ago.

Projection may be part of a complex of behaviors called DARVO--"Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." Here's what Jennifer Freyd at the University of Oregon [link updated], who coined the term, has to say about it.

DARVO refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrong doing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. DARVO stands for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim into an alleged offender. This occurs, for instance, when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of "falsely accused" and attacks the accuser's credibility or even blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.

As I wrote, projection isn't even the half of it. Tara Palmatier at Shrink4Men describes it as "a combination of projection, denial, lying, blame shifting and gaslighting." Sound familiar?

Yes, it does, and it's become even more familiar during the past decade, especially since 2015.

ABC News updated the story this morning in Trump organization sentenced to maximum fine after tax fraud conviction.

The Trump organization has been ordered to pay $1.6 million for violating tax laws and its former CFO Allen Weisselberg is now serving five months in jail.

The Trump Organization and its lawyers tried to engage in more blame-shifting by attempting to pin the crime on its former CFO Allen Weisselberg, adding to the DARVO. While the judge and jury didn't buy that defense, it did show that the Trump Organization was unwittingly celebrating another day yesterday, National Blame Someone Else Day (The first Friday the 13th of the year) from 8SA - Books, Biographies and Literature Summary.

National Blame Someone Else Day pawns our mistakes on to other reasons. Blame someone or something for your errors on the 1st Friday the 13th of the year.

I think The Former Guy and his organization fall into the camp of not taking any responsibility for their mistakes and other wrong-doing to the point of really believing they did nothing wrong (they did) and blaming it all on others.  For them, every day is Blame Someone Else Day, just like every day is Festivus.

National Day Calendar also has a page on this day, but no video yet. I'm going to be a good environmentalist and conserve that resource for next year. In the meantime, stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment feature followed by this year's version of diversity among Golden Globes winners for MLK Day.