The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

The Perils are Over!—If You Want It

This week, the Colorado Supreme Court declared Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and barred him from the state’s presidential primary ballot.  This was based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, which many once deemed a “fantasy”.

Indeed, when I promoted this idea in an August Newsletter entitled, “Containing the ‘Trump Contagion’: Now, May a Chorus of Legal Experts Begin,” many were skeptical.  However, I saw it as another opportunity to do what mental health experts once attempted: “keeping with norms and standards, regardless of threats.”

Now, the violent online threats have begun, and this should be seen as a sign that the measure is working.  We should keep going, with more states in tow!  Just a handful could turn what is now looking like a 2024 victory for Trump into a surefire loss.

What was unthinkable at one time—like the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three—can become matter-of-fact in a matter of a few key actions.  It is like terming Donald Trump “dangerous”: whereas it is commonplace now, this was not at all the case when my colleagues and I convened our first university conference on Trump’s unprecedented dangers to the country and the world, soon after his inauguration.  Many credit our meeting and our subsequent public-service book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, with changing public discourse and better preparing our nation than it otherwise might have been.

We know, at least, that White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly made use of our book and, with the knowledge we gave him, may have even prevented a nuclear war!  At the time, we were meeting with more than fifty U.S. Congress members who were relying on us to: “educate the public medically, so that [they] could act politically.”

But just as a few key, spirited actions could shift the tide in a productive direction, so can a few key, cynical actions dampen or reverse the tide.  This is what happened when the attacks, the backlash, and—to my astonishment—the retribution came from none other than the psychiatric establishment.  Just as we were able to infuse hope into a nation’s leaders for a just intervention against a looming crisis, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), led by Jeffrey Lieberman—who bootlessly had his eye on a position in the administration—was able to bring the nation to a standstill.

U.S. Congress members themselves were outraged at the time—with Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland leading them—and offered to release a public statement to the APA, clarifying that they wished to hear from us and not to interfere.  I should have taken them up on that offer, but at the time I was embarrassed for my own profession, myself in disbelief at what the APA was promulgating.  It was essentially pushing disinformation so that it could silence and discredit us, no matter the nonexistent excuse, in order to scurry favors for federal funds—which it did, in unprecedented ways, under a presidency that only selectively rewarded scientific organizations that went against science.

Hence, here we are today, having subsequently suffered more than a million unnecessary American deaths, an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the destabilization of our world (Donald Trump laid the groundwork for the current struggles in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Israel—not Joe Biden), and now we are watching democracy slip away as a four-times-indicted, ninety-one-times-charged criminal is poised to take the U.S. presidency again.

Last year, an article was published with the subhead, “The Vindication of Bandy Lee,” stating that I—or in truth thousands of mental health professionals—who “warned … that Donald Trump would unleash violence was absolutely right.”  Still, nothing has been done to bring the most critical voice back into public discourse, and the one remedy we truly have—which is necessarily a mental health remedy before it can become a political remedy—is the only one that is excluded.

Now, the word “dangerous” in relation to Donald Trump has spread to other nations:

A few weeks ago, I highlighted that, for the first time in the history of The Economist the U.K., the magazine singled out one person to feature as the greatest of dangers for the year ahead.  The cover headlined: “Donald Trump Poses the Biggest Danger to the World in 2024.”

A few days ago, El País of France headlined its English edition with: “A Danger Called Donald Trump,” leading the article with:

“Teetering between prison and the White House, navigating his campaign and his trial, the former president is planning his return….  His victory would alter U.S. democracy and its role in the world.”

The graphic imagery at the top of this Newsletter comes from the publication.

Back at home, there are a few more examples: 

Liz Cheney from the former Republican mainstream warns that Donald Trump is “the single most dangerous threat” the U.S. faces.  She escalates her warnings to say: “We cannot survive a president willing to destroy our Constitution.” 

And writing in the Washington Post, Robert Kagan raises the stakes further: “The chances of the United States falling into a dictatorship have increased considerably.”  He observes with alarm: “In just a few years, we’ve gone from being relatively certain of our democracy, to being just steps away … from the possibility of a dictatorship.”

This is, indeed, how quickly mental pathology can spread.

As the 2024 election looms, we are dealing with a More Dangerous, a Much More Dangerous, Donald Trump.  What is extraordinary is not Trump, who has the same pathology as at least a thousand individuals I have seen in my prison psychiatry practice, but the fact that such a person was allowed such power—and we seem intent on insisting that this is not a psychiatric problem to be dealt with through psychiatric expertise, even at the demise of our nation!  Now, Trump goes on telegraphing retribution and vindictiveness, which he vows to bring with him to implement in the White House.  Others have apprehended a “civil war,” with his creating a constitutional crisis, finding excuses to use the military to impose martial law and to end all legal proceedings against him and those he wishes to pardon, to resurrect, and to elevate to powerful positions.  Anything is possible—this is what happens when we install a mentally unfit person in a position he cannot handle and try to pretend that the Emperor has clothes.