Independent Journalism Covers Our Conference

Anthony Davis of Five Minute News did an Excellent Feature of a ‘Landmark Conference’

As it has been decided that I would take a break from the Weekend Show, I wish to take this opportunity to give my greatest compliments and gratitude to Anthony Davis, host of the Show, for making the exceptional decision to feature me weekly. He has done this with no other guest, and if our conference were a landmark event, I consider his a landmark decision: going where the major media would not go—that is, to have on regularly an actual expert on the most critical issue, at the most critical time.

The exposure has resulted in floods of messages of gratitude, relief, and affirmation, as well as some poignant ones:

Thank you so much, Dr. Lee, for all that you do! I continue to listen and relisten to your interviews on Anthony Davis’ The Weekend Show and spread the word about the essentialness of the knowledge and understanding you provide during these dangerous times. Being a survivor of psychological violence … from childhood and adulthood, I am so grateful to you from that respect, as well, for sharing knowledge that has freed me in ways that a plethora of reading for decades, therapy and classes has not until this point….

The deprivation of information itself is psychological violence. We can see how difficult it is to get needed information out from the fact that, even as the New York Times has finally mentioned us in a major, front-page article on Donald Trump’s mental deterioration—and barely allowed reporting on our recent conference—it had to focus on “age” and could not bring itself to mention our names (since it partnered with the American Psychiatric Association in early 2018 to denounce us and henceforth to set “the standard” for all media). I have stated, since the beginning, that I have become a barometer for the nation; if I am silenced, as an expert member of the field that has the most relevant information for the public to know to protect itself—then it is a measure of our authoritarianism. I have also stated that, if we fail to address a mental health issue on mental health terms—in other words, if we pretend that mental problems do not exist—then all other approaches and institutions would equally fail. This is exactly what happened.

The lay public cannot know without access to expertise that mental capacity is a basic requirement for all human affairs; we can only ignore it when it is present. When it is absent, nothing else can hold. And since it engulfs the capacity even to recognize that anything is wrong and to fix it, it is critical that we intervene early. It is because of this urgency that legal, governmental, and military experts found it necessary to convene with us at the National Press Club, after all other methods have failed.

Yet, Davis’ Five Minute News (apart from the Weekend Show) was the only organization that did a feature of our conference, in two parts, which are excellent:

And:

Davis told me that, had he not just returned from another trip and had two small children to attend to, he would have flown in from Los Angeles to cover the event in person.  One can surmise what pleasure I have had to interact with a journalist who has good independent judgment, handles mental health issues sensitively and knowledgeably, and applies uncommon journalistic professionalism.  It has been a breath of fresh air at a time when only entertainers and operators seem to be gaining ground, as the public is less and less capable of discerning rigor.

His program has in turn allowed Meidas Touch Network to disseminate our conference results through its own channels:

And:

CNN shut down the Atlantic’s David Frum, after he gave a terrific summary of the dangers of a “clinical narcissist.”  They did so on the basis that he was not a “card-carrying” clinical psychologist—but would they, or any network, invite on a real clinical expert?  Another such incident occurred in 2020 when Donny Deutsch tried to say that Donald Trump was a “sociopath”.  At that time, the network simply switched him off altogether, without any transition, in ways I had never seen before or since.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, after featuring and complimenting our book multiple times, cannot ever invite me back.  He had on Mary Trump after the New York Times article that mentioned us, but she would never mention our names, either—indeed, she has actively suppressed us, as George Conway has done, while reinforcing the misimpression that mental health experts were censoring themselves.  Rather, they misrepresented their own expertise and gave the public wrong information at critical times.  They may be getting out useful knowledge now that would not have otherwise, but they have contributed to the current predicament, and the public should have access to much more.

The New Republic rebuked the Times for barely broaching Donald Trump’s mental defects for calling Kamala Harris “mentally disabled,” while Trump was “barking out hatred and bile like a mad dog.”  Indeed, one might consider that the Times’ current coverup of Trump’s impairments is more severe than its prior “sanewashing” of Adolf Hitler.  Dr. James Gilligan, my mentor and renowned violence expert who presented at the conference, stated that Trump “could turn the World Wars and the genocides of the twentieth into minor footnotes in the history of human violence.”

Mental health experts and national security experts urgently gathered at the National Press Club for a landmark conference because of the urgency of the issue at hand, which is the much more dangerous unfitness of Donald Trump. The conference summary video is here.  The book that was released at the conference is here.  The conference website will have regular updates.  Please continue to support our getting our message out, for, as we concluded at the conference, we cannot afford to have a dangerously unfit president in this very dangerous world!