America is Disintegrating Because of a Dangerously Mentally-Disturbed President

This was Predictable and Preventable—Indeed, We Predicted It and Tried to Prevent It

Allow me to summarize briefly this critical moment, especially after Donald Trump’s deceitfully manipulative, campaign rally-style State of the Union reality TV show that highlights the perilous state of our Union through conduct more than through words. The dangerous convolution of predicaments he has brought our country and our world to has few parallels, and had our warnings and advice since his first election been heeded, what has followed since could have been prevented. Indeed, we were actively silenced and public demand artificially suppressed.

A poll, conducted just before the speech, showed that a surprising number of Republicans now think he is becoming “erratic with age.” What is not mentioned is that his ability to deliver the longest-ever State of the Union address is not natural stamina but a pathological drive (a compulsion for the adulation of crowds as he fights for his psychic life). Nor is it widely known that his ability to charm and captivate stems not from ordinary charisma but from the predatory quality of dangerous psychopathology (having no capacity for human compassion or compunction).

From the 2017 conference at Yale School of Medicine and the publication of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump later that year, we came forth as psychiatrists and mental health experts trained to recognize severe and dangerous mental impairments. Based on our education and clinical experience, we identified patterns that we believed posed serious risks. We explained that we know how to detect, handle, and treat such signs, even as they mislead and beguile. Those of us who work forensically routinely advise courts, prisons, and governing bodies on how to protect the public from dangerous individuals. While few of us had evaluated a president, assessing risk at that level was not fundamentally different at all from the kinds of determinations we make every day. This is what medical neutrality is about.

From the beginning, we warned that mental conditions, like physical illnesses, can worsen if not properly addressed. When combined with vast presidential powers, such impairments could become increasingly destructive. Without safeguards or intervention, the danger would likely escalate to the point of becoming unstoppable. We are now approaching that unstoppable point.

In January 2018, I wrote an article for the Guardian, entitled: “Trump is now dangerous—that makes his mental health a matter of public interest.” In it, I stated:

Indeed, at no other time in US history has a group of mental health professionals been so collectively concerned about a sitting president’s dangerousness. This is not because he is an unusual person—many of his symptoms are very common—but it is highly unusual to find a person with such signs of danger in the office of presidency. For the US, it may be unprecedented; for parts of the world where this has happened before, the outcome has been uniformly devastating.

But then, just as our book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, was an unprecedented New York Times bestseller of its kind by public demand, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment was rapidly gaining ground in the U.S. Congress. This was when the financially-conflicted and politically-compromised American Psychiatric Association (APA), not only shut us down but convinced the media that mental health experts were the only experts not allowed to speak about their area of expertise! I have written in detail about what happened, both after the Covid-19 pandemic as well as during this presidency.

When Donald Trump was not removed, just as we predicted, he became more and more dangerous, even to the point of attempting a never-before coup, January 6, 2021, to stay in power.

Now in 2026, so far unstopped, Donald Trump has his own national military force, known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with a bigger budget than all other law-enforcement agencies combined. He has allocated 38 billion dollars to build new detention camps across the country, employing private prison contractors with controversial records. He is about to ignite what may well escalate into World War III. He has plastered his name and picture everywhere, starting with a large banner on the Justice Department building, essentially threatening to undermine everyone who opposes him. And he has set the stage to subvert and to delegitimize the midterm elections, so that he and his fellow thugs can stay in power, no matter what.

What has gone wrong with America?

First of all, we have to admit that the ground was fertile, long before the arrival of Donald Trump, who exposed a severely-hypocritical democracy and freedom façade that had become corrupt and dangerous for some time. Trump then exploited everything, as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges brilliantly summarizes in, “The Last Election.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) have acted and ruled in unprecedented ways, attempting to bring international war criminals to justice, including the prime minister of Israel and the president of Russia, but not yet the president of the United States. And because of inconsistent application, Donald Trump has been allowed severely to threaten and undercut them.

Some nations in the rest of the world are attempting to do the things that we should be doing—but the Trump/MAGA-driven United States remains on an accelerating, disintegrating trajectory.

In South Korea, the former president who attempted to use a martial-law coup and troops to stay in power, just like Donald Trump, has just been quickly convicted and sentenced to life. In Brazil, the former president who attempted a militarized coup to stay in power, in copycat Trump style, has also been imprisoned.

In the U.K., the king’s own brother, former Prince Andrew, as well as the former British ambassador to the U.S., have been arrested for crimes involving notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In Israel, the judicial authorities have for years been trying, and continue to do so, to bring their criminal prime minister to account for what he has done both at home and abroad—even as Trump is bringing tremendous pressure on the Israeli president to pardon his sidekick Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yet, in our country, at the governmental level all the criminals complicit with Epstein, including those who financed and criminally engaged with him, remain unindicted, while many of them not only knew about his crimes but were involved in and benefiting from them.

We all have to wonder now, have we reached the point of Donald Trump becoming unstoppable, just as we warned could occur from the start in 2017?

Then we all have to ask, more than ever before: What is wrong with America? And what are we going to do about it?

(To be Continued.)

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is leading a public course series on major issues of our day, with Preventing Violence Now. The next class is this Saturday, February 28, 2026. More information and registration is here.

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and cofounder of Preventing Violence Now. She mainly worked with maximum-security prisoners and public-sector patients, before she became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that alerted against dangerous leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on dangerous leadership that has recently been expanded, in addition to a volume on how dangerous signs in a leader spreads and two critical statements on dangerous leadership. As many of the dangers she warned against unfolded—including millions of unnecessary pandemic deaths, the propagation of political violence, the exacerbation of economic inequality, the destruction of democracy, the devastation of the climate, the replacement of international collaboration with hostile confrontation, a renewed and accelerated nuclear arms race, a global emboldening of dictators leading to brutal warfare and genocide, and growing state-sanctioned cruelty and human rights violations—she has advocated for another way. Now, the author of the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; 17 scholarly books and journal special issues; and over 300 opinion editorials, introduces her curriculum on rising above the current destructive course to embrace an awareness of, “One World or None.”