Presidential Mental Fitness

Coming Attractions

Coming in a few weeks will be the second anniversary of the insurrection-coup conceived of, fomented by, and clandestinely led by Donald Trump.  He came too close to being successful.  Coming on Monday, December 19, is the final televised hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, then on Wednesday, December 21, the Committee's Report.  These will come with “Criminal Referrals” of the perpetrators and those responsible, including Trump.

Long before January 6, 2021, I personally, and the World Mental Health Coalition collectively, repeatedly warned against the serious dangers and never-before violence likely to result from the Trump presidency.  We did so initially at our Yale Conference in April 2017, followed a few months later with our bestselling book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.  We continued to do so throughout the years Trump inhabited the White House, with our major interdisciplinary conference at the National Press Club in March 2019 and our “Prescriptions for Survival,” beginning the very first month of the Covid pandemic in March 2020.

Because of our expertise and professional societal responsibility, we repeatedly urged a mandatory psychiatric evaluation, for even a First Citizen is subject to Mental Health Laws, not to mention deserves Medical Standard of Care.  As U.S. president, the invocation of the 25th Amendment requires medical data—which were prevented from being collected.  We have subsequently learned that both the deputy attorney general and the acting FBI director had themselves secretly concluded in May 2017, shortly after our conference, that the 25th Amendment should be invoked and were even planning to “wear a wire” in the Oval Office to get the proof they felt was needed.  Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was consulting our bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, “as an owner’s manual”—to try to manage a uniquely mentally unstable president.

In recent months, in our contacts with the January 6th Select Committee, we have urged it to use this unique opportunity to make recommendations about the importance of requiring proper screening of the mental and physical fitness of U.S. presidents. We also made recommendations on how to update the 25th Amendment to make it actually usable when necessary.

Now, we await what will happen in the days ahead.  We will evaluate what the Committee does, and does not do, with regard to these major overriding issues we have been raising for the past five years.

A U.S. president should not be the greatest threat to the people he or she is supposed to serve. A simple mental fitness exam can prevent such situations. All jobs in the United States require mental fitness, and many chief executive officers of corporations must pass a test before assuming their positions. Only the nation’s highest elected offices do not require mental fitness.