‘The Most Dangerous Days of Our Lifetimes’: Psychiatrist Renews Call to Remove 'Mentally Unfit' Trump From Office

Nearly nine years ago, forensic psychiatrist and violence expert Bandy Lee, then at the Yale School of Medicine, edited “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” (St. Martin’s Press). In the best-selling book and a subsequent edition, 37 psychiatrists and other mental health experts offered their views on why Trump was and is unfit for the presidency and a grave danger to America and the world.

Following the book’s publication, the American Psychiatric Association criticized Lee – who was not a member of the association – for violating the APA’s Goldwater rule for members that psychiatrists should not diagnose subjects from afar. Alan Dershowitz, a Trump ally and lawyer, also complained to Yale about a tweet in which Lee criticized him – a complaint that resulted in her dismissal from the university despite widespread protests from colleagues.

Despite persecution and even death threats, Lee continued her work with a group she founded called the World Mental Health Coalition, giving seminars, advising local governments on prison reform and working for Trump’s removal from office

Earlier this year, after the unprovoked U.S. attack that launched the war against Iran, she wrote: “We are in the most dangerous days of our lifetimes, days pregnant with an escalating World War and the very real possibility that a severely mentally-incapacitated American president… may escalate to nuclear weapons.”

That threat began to feel still more grave in April when Trump lodged another threat against Iran, tweeting that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” – an apparent reference to a nuclear first strike. In May, Lee and the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which includes several Nobel laureates, wrote that “it is our expert opinion that Donald J. Trump is mentally unfit” to be President and that it was “urgent” to lawfully remove him from office. She is also starting a Survival University (whose name may later change) as a public health initiative for healing, which will offer online courses to help educate the public on what needs to be done.

Lee spoke with MindSite News Co-Editor Diana Hembree in an interview last year and in this interview we follow up on what has transpired since then.

Diana Hembree: When we last spoke a year ago, you observed that Trump had deteriorated greatly from his first term, and that the level of danger has vastly increased. How have things changed since?

Dr. Bandy Lee: We predicted his dramatic deterioration since the very early days in 2016, when my colleagues and I began to speak of how someone with his psychological structure should never be given power. The factor that is most responsible for his decline is the granting of his pathological desire for power. All that has happened since was known and entirely preventable, since mental health professionals are generally very familiar with his type.

That his grandiosity would transmogrify into grotesque delusions of grandeur, and his narcissism into violent, insatiable megalomania, was only a matter of course, once he occupied the most powerful position on the planet.

In May, when you and 19 other psychiatrists and clinicians called for Trump’s immediate removal from office, you urged White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella to conduct a neuropsychiatric examination and brief Congress on the results. You called attention to an earlier statement by 36 medical experts that was entered into the Congressional Record and called for Trump’s removal from office for reasons of mental instability and his unchecked authority to launch nuclear weapons. What was the outcome?

I signed the statement with 35 of the greatest medical authorities in the country in February of this year, even before the war on Iran, and we were hearing that a large number of senators were in agreement with it, including Republicans. However, none would put their name to the cause – not one – each deferring to others. This is an effect of what I have been calling, “Trump Contagion,” which affects Democrats, too.

We were expecting major hearings by the time it entered the Congressional Record, but to our surprise, even the senators who (placed it in the record) said they were leaving it to the press to pick up.

You wrote recently in your Substack column that “the debate over whether Trump has ‘frontotemporal dementia’ or ‘psychosis’ is a distraction” and that he should be evaluated – with or without his consent – for dangerousness and the need to remove him from access to weapons and an office that he is not qualified to hold. Given the Republican majority in Congress, what are your recommendations to Congress and the American public?

The path to his removal is growing narrower by the day. Endlessly discussing possible diagnoses, with their complicated terms and impressive-sounding symptoms, is a hindrance to removing an unfit president. What people need to know are their mental health rights – that dangerousness is the issue, not diagnosis, and someone who is a danger to the public needs to be quickly contained and fully evaluated. This is the medical standard of care.

What we require is a shift in consciousness, and I urge Congress and the public to to see our current crisis as the public mental health problem that it is.

Change is still possible, but it depends on a new consciousness, which is what we are now trying to do through Survival University This can happen if the American public regained its collective mental health and were uncompromising in its demand that its government respond to the reality at hand. We are not helpless but actually have all the power, if we do not voluntarily give it up in advance..

What impact have the Epstein files and Trump’s years-long friendship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had on his reputation?

The belief that Donald Trump – an adjudicated sexual offender – would expose and hold to account sex traffickers is based in a very powerful dynamic. It is most commonly called “identification with the aggressor,” best articulated by Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi, which essentially describes how victims of domestic abuse, cults, hostage situations, and institutional abuse anticipate and comply with the abuser, believing this would bring safety.

Therefore, contrary to common expectation, victims of violence unconsciously align with violent offenders for “self-protection” – and this is why there is such a mixed reaction among Trump followers regarding both the Epstein files and electing a convicted felon.

Besides attacking Iran and Venezuela, Trump has talked about taking over other countries such as Greenland and Cuba. How do his psychological ills inform this behavior?

We know that Donald Trump is himself a victim of abuse. He has to dominate, control, and attack preemptively in order to feel safe….What needed to happen was to keep him from power, to teach him that displays of force are not the best way to reduce intolerable feelings of shame and humiliation, and to guide him toward actually finding ways of achieving true self-respect and pride. Placing him in an office he is unfit for has only ballooned his expectations, making him angrier and more vengeful over his own incompetence, and has brought unprecedented destruction to our country.

You’ve called Trump a “malignant narcissist” – could you expand on that?

Malignant narcissism and its more extreme version, psychopathy, are all along the spectrum of pathological narcissism, according to American psychiatrist Otto Kernberg. This is the one psychological disorder that poses a danger and makes the afflicted person more likely to be a perpetrator than a victim of violence (most mentally ill persons are more likely to be victims of violence). The rage attacks, thirst for vengeance, and absence of compassion or conscience in the case of psychopathy, make one capable of unlimited destruction without remorse. Holding him accountable is exactly what we need to reduce his symptoms, and since his illness does not eliminate the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, he will not qualify for “not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Most Americans opposed the war on Iran and wanted the Epstein files released. The No Kings marches attracted tens of millions of protesters, but that has not moved the needle on the Trump Administration’s embrace of authoritarianism.

The needle has not moved because the source of the problem has not been correctly identified. The large numbers need to be complemented with detailed strategy, based on detailed mental health knowledge. Mental health experts can advise on effective strategy, because they understand the underlying dynamics in detail, which the people need to be aware of and mobilize. I proposed some actions in the past, but these are minor compared to the consciousness that the people could adopt: that they are the president’s employers who have the right to demand competent, independent expertise and intervention.

Many judges have ruled against the Trump administration, yet the guardrails for democracy continue to fall due to the decisions of the rightwing majority on the Supreme Court.

Now people can see how important mental capacity is as a prerequisite for any rational system to work. No court can function without the basic building blocks of mental capacity, and Donald Trump has spread his incapacity through “Trump Contagion,” or prolonged exposure to a severely symptomatic person in an influential office. This has resulted in propagating his paranoia, violence-proneness, detachment from reality, and delusional “religious” beliefs.

The end result of this contagion is shared psychosis – folie à deux when occurring in a pair, or folie à millions when happening by the millions.. The treatment is to remove the exposure.

Our current inability to remove a mentally-incapacitated president is not because of flaws in the 25th Amendment or any other provision, but because we have allowed this exposure to continue for too long. Now, our nation collectively acts as if we were psychotic – in ways that our progeny will wonder what happened to us. When a population is mentally-incapacitated, no system can work, no matter how well-constructed. This is why my focus has been on educating the public, understanding how our mental health is affected, and ultimately elevating our level of consciousness. Then, all else will fall into place.