Pete Hegseth just proved that, like Trump, he's in the Dark Tetrad. By Hal M. Brown, MSW

I’m surprised that Pete Hegseth didn’t have his face photoshopped into the image of Franklin the Turtle dressed as a warrior and firing a bazooka at narcoterrorists. It took me a few minutes to put his face on the cartoon he posted (here’s how ¹:

Update: Note that the boats in the cartoon with armed men and loaded with drugs look nothing like the real boats:

The cartoon shown above, which was posted online by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, proves that like President Donald J, Trump, his Commander in Chief, he has gone beyond being in the Dark Triad. This is a way to describe someone who has extreme narcissism, psychopathy (i.e being a sociopath), and Machiavellianism (cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics). To put a finer point on this, he is not only an extreme narcissist, he is what is called a body narcissist. A body narcissist is someone who has an excessive focus on their physical appearance and uses their looks as a primary source of validation. This type of narcissism often involves behaviors such as obsessing over fitness and seeking admiration based on their physique.

What follows is adapted from what I wrote about Trump in March, 2025.

Some perfectly normal people have sadistic fantasies about what they’d like to do or see happen to certain people. They may think about these things, they may write about them, they may talk about them to friends. In this poltical climate they may involve someone named Donald Trump. They may be realistic fantasies involving torture or may take a Dantesque turn and be about a special level of Hell designed by the quintessential sadist Satan for just that person and his cohorts.

It takes a uniquely psychopathological personality to share these fantasies with the world. It takes someone who fits into The Dark Tetrad. More about that later.

This is the RawStory article that led me to write today’s Substact:

Trump floats sending ‘thug’ Tesla vandals to infamous El Salvador prison

This is the Trump Truth Social post put online at 4:30 AM today.

The RawStory article cites this story in Foreign Policy Magazine.

Here’s an excerpt:

Former prisoners have told Cristosal, the human rights organization that I work for, that they were greeted at prison gates by guards who beat them and warned that they would not leave the prison walking.

Despite the Bukele administration’s well-documented human rights abuses, the president’s offer to the United States has the backing of a viral marketing campaign. The government brags about its harsh treatment of prisoners and high incarceration rates online. It has produced high-resolution photos and videos of detainees and prisons that are distributed to the media and used in news reports around the world.

At the center of Bukele’s propaganda is El Salvador’s now infamous megaprison, the Terrorist Confinement Center (known by its Spanish acronym, CECOT), which opened in 2023 and can house up to 40,000 inmates. It is still operating at half its capacity. Government handout images and content from choreographed press visits to CECOT have appeared below many headlines about El Salvador’s state of exception in the international press. Prisoners have shaved heads, tattooed faces, and wear all-white outfits—including white Crocs.

Foreign journalists reporting on the state of exception who fixate on CECOT are likely focusing on the wrong prisoners in the wrong prison. The middle-aged faces and full-body tattoos that appear in the footage from the megaprison suggest that they are gang members who have likely been in prison since well before the state of exception began. (Most Salvadoran gangs abandoned the practice of tattooing their faces years ago.)

Here’s more:

If the bodies of the 85,000 people detained without warrants bear any marks, they are more likely those of scabies and torture rather than tattoos. Testimonies gathered by Cristosal from former prisoners describe horrific overcrowding, disease, and systematic denial of food, clothing, medicine, and basic hygiene in El Salvador’s older prisons.

Cristosal and other human rights organizations have documented credible evidence of sexual assault and rape against women and children detained under the state of exception. The combination of harsh conditions and systematic physical torture has caused the deaths of at least 367 people, according to documentary, photographic, and forensic evidence gathered by Cristosal’s investigators. Salvadoran authorities deny that torture and killings occur in the country’s prisons.

I rather doubt Foreign Policy Magazine is on Trump’s morning reading list.

Back to sadism.

If you are up on your Trump psychopatholgy you not only know what malignant narcissism is, but also know what the Dark Triad is. There have been many articles about Trump and the Dark Triad (here). I’ve written several including, most recently, this one:

Because many people who have traits of The Dark Triad also are sadistic another pesonalality type called The Dark Tetrad was added by experts. You may not know what the Dark Tetrad is.

It is worth knowing what the Dark Tetrad is. Here’s a definition from a Psyhology Today article:

The Dark Tetrad, also known as the Dark Quad, is a set of interrelated negative personality features: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism. The term is an expansion of the idea of the Dark Triad construct, which does not include sadism. In the last decade, researchers have noted a correlation of sadism with Dark Triad traits, with the result of the Dark Tetrad.

People with Dark Tetrad traits score high on measures of the following:

• Narcissism: A belief that one is special, particularly gifted, obsessed with themselves and that they are superior to others.

• Machiavellianism: A tendency to see people as a means to achieve one’s own goals.

• Psychopathy: A condition characterized by a lack of affective empathy and the willingness to exploit others.

• Sadism: The tendency to derive pleasure from the pain or humiliation of others.

In the illustration I made psychopathy and sadism stand out because these characteristics are what makes someone with the power over peoples lives evil. Someone could be the ruler of a county, a boss, or someone in a family and if they are in the Dark Tetrad they will inflict great pain. You can be just a Machiavellian narcissist and not revel in being cruel to people.

It should be obvious that Trump is an example of someone who has all of the traits of The Dark Tetrad. If you want to explore this further, here’s an article by Morgan Sinclair, PhD: Heart of Darkness. Trump isn’t just Dark Triad. He’s Dark *Tetrad*.

Here’s Sabrina Haake on Hegseth:

1.