‘Trump will Surrender and Claim Victory,’ and ‘Trump is Mentally Unfit for Office’

The First Two Television Reporters to have Invited Us Feature Us Again

Immediately following the publication of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump in 2017, Lawrence O’Donnell and Mehdi Hasan invited us onto their programs on MSNBC and Al Jazeera, respectively. They were the first for television, and now both have featured us in major ways during this first week of Mental Health Awareness Month.

O’Donnell incisively said, in a segment predicting surrender while claiming victory:

Donald Trump appears to be losing more than his trade war. There are public moments now where he seems to be losing his mind, like when he sits beside the prime minister of Canada in the Oval Office, and he describes his desire to seize control of Canada….

Donald Trump’s own mental health … has been called into question since his first presidential campaign, which led a group of 27 psychiatrists to coauthor a book published in the first year of the Trump presidency titled, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President…. They warned us at the time, in that first year of the first Trump presidency, that everything they were seeing and that we were seeing that was problematic in Donald Trump’s mental health was only going to get worse.

That is exactly how I summarized our book: that what we were seeing was serious, that it would grow worse, and that if we did not act, it would become uncontainable. O’Donnell, who continuously featured our book through the first Trump presidency, added:

They have published new editions of the book, in which more and more mental health professionals have joined in the analysis, with the most recent title being, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

It is notable that he stated in the plural, “new editions,” since we indeed published another edition on our own when publishers would no longer touch us, despite our bestselling status, and programs could no longer invite us, despite the explosion of interest each time we appeared. We published the latest edition on September 27, 2024, and called it, The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew.

Now, later this month, we will be publishing the updated version, The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 50 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew (it has been assembled and shared privately with lawmakers and other consultants of us, but for the public this will a first release!)—for the need for our voices has only grown.

Earlier this week, Hasan published a brilliant piece: “Donald Trump is Mentally Unfit for Office. Here’s the Evidence.” He remarked:

The press coverage of the president was brutal. The Washington Post said he should do some “soul searching” after a “calamitous” performance raised “legitimate questions about whether he’s up for another four years in the world’s toughest job.”

The Chicago Tribune called him “a man now struggling to maintain a line of thought and keep track of complex facts, a man who gets flustered under deadline pressure” and who is protected by aides who have “painted a picture of fictional cognitive vitality.”

The Economist described him as “befuddled and incoherent—too infirm, frankly, to cope with another four years in the world’s hardest job.”

The president, of course, was Joe Biden. In June 2024, a “befuddled and incoherent” Biden embarrassed himself in front of tens of millions of television viewers in a live presidential debate…. His onstage meltdown became the biggest news story in the world. The New York Times editorial board called for him to step aside from the race. So did senior members of his own party….

Almost a year later, however, I have to ask: Where are the headlines and editorials from mainstream media outlets such as the Times and the Post calling on Donald Trump to step down as president? Where is the media chatter about Trump’s seeming dementia, or the round-the-clock panels on cable news discussing the current president’s mental competence? Why do we continue to give a pass to a 78-year-old who we can all see is in cognitive decline, and who now comes across as more “befuddled and incoherent” than Biden ever did?

Hasan then discussed what happened during the first Trump presidency:

His then-chief of staff, John Kelly, secretly purchased a copy of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book co-authored by 27 mental health professionals warning that the president was mentally unfit for high office, as he tried to “understand the president’s particular psychoses and consulted it while he was running the White House, which he was known to refer to as ‘Crazytown.’”

And yet here we are. In his second term in office…. In his ABC News interview last week, Trump himself took several shots at Biden’s mental health, repeatedly calling him “grossly incompetent” and claiming: “I don’t even think he knew what the hell was happening.”

What is seldom noticed is that Kelly, who considered our book a “helpful guide” to curbing presidential dangers, applied the psychological principles we outlined to stop him from launching nuclear weapons against North Korea—when no other political or military method would work! Yet, similar existential dangers not only remain but are amplified in his second term. This is why we published urgent statements about his cognitive problems and psychological dangers on our organizational web site, even before the election, signed by many of the nation’s most renowned mental health experts (whose names are hidden for now for their safety).

Why are his serious, existentially-perilous problems not addressed, even to a fraction of extent of Joe Biden’s? Some of the reasons are that, with more severe symptoms, there is:

1. More redirection of emotions from a dangerous target to a safer one (displacement).

2. More intense refusal to acknowledge facts or reality to avoid distress (denial).

3. Stronger unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts (repression).

4. More invested attempts to “cancel out” disturbing thoughts through contrary statements (undoing).

5. More making up for deficiencies by noticing “proficiencies” in other areas (compensation).

6. More pathological replacement of an intolerable impulse or emotion with its exaggerated opposite (reaction formation).

7. Greater attribution of one’s own undesirable characteristics onto one’s opponent (projection).

Our nation, unfortunately, has sunk itself further in unhealthy responses, in order to align with an authority figure’s pathological defenses. Hasan repeated the phrase I helped make popular in the Trump era, when I started using Twitter to “translate” his tweets:

Every accusation is a confession.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is holding weekly live sessions on:

“Special Topics in One World or None”

The next session will be this Friday, May 9, 2025, at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT on Zoom. A paid subscription is required to receive a link the morning before. Thank you!

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit 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 fit leadership (now privately expanded), in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Canada (with notable articles in Polish, Turkish, and Korean). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum for public education on “One World or None.