"Pathological and Toxic": Bandy Lee & Mary Trump on Donald, "If He Can in Any Way Profit From Your Death, He’ll Facilitate It, and Then He’ll Ignore the Fact That You Died."
August 17, 2020
Donald Trump (Gage Skidmore)
By KAMMY (from the Daily Kos community)
For the past month psychologist Dr. Mary L. Trump has made the rounds of television talk shows and podcasts publicizing her book about the danger of having Uncle Donald in the White House. Most interviews have focused on tales illustrating the dysfunction of “Donald,” as she calls him, and her grandfather Fred Sr, who is credited with making him the man he is today.
Family Trump makes yours and mine look like the Cleavers on Sesame Street.
Lesser known, but most revealing, is an interview conducted by Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a Yale psychiatrist who has studied Trump for many years. Before their meet up via Zoom, Lee and Trump knew of each other but had never met. We eavesdrop on a fascinating discussion between two experts, one with experience in the bosom of the Family and an education providing a lens that stilled the whirling kaleidoscope, and the other, a world-renowned psychiatrist making yeoman’s efforts for years to warn the world about Donald.
We witness a kinship blossom among the ruins: they both want to stop the madness.
Dr. Trump describes her uncle as “the most dangerous man in the world.” If he was not in the White House, he would still have multiple pathologies on “every axis” of the scale, she says, everything from attachment disorder, learning disabilities, physical problems, mood disorders and drug abuse. And that’s before you even get to his personality disorders.
But it is the combination of pathology and power of his White House office that makes him lethal.
Dr. Trump believes that her uncle is “a danger to himself and others” and he would be so even if he wasn’t in the White House. This is the standard used by mental health court judges to determine whether someone should be held, involuntarily, for observation and evaluation for mental competence. Hyperbole is not Mary’s jam: her choice of these legal words is not happenstance.
(Who will have the heart and nerve to make that call and seek the help of a DC probate or mental health court judge to protect the nation?)
Trump was unsuited for the presidency from the start, she says. The reasons are dire: lack of impulse control: raw contempt for anyone who doesn’t toe his line and unconditionally support him: and his inability to stand for anything but his own self-interest. Trump says her uncle uses the presidency as an extension of his own ambition: “He co-opts the government to advocate who he is and to advance his own agenda.”
He is not the people’s president: he is the president of Donald Trump.
Dr. Trump holds Donald responsible for the loss of American lives during the pandemic. Dr. Lee agrees, comparing our wretched virus-contaminated state to other countries which have contained the virus. They both overtly propound criminal liability: whether it is manslaughter or homicide depends on what a jury determines to be his state of mind. Was Donald Trump negligent when he told Americans for months that the virus was going to disappear and that only Anarchists wore masks, or did he have intent, the “mens rea” to kill.
These are exactly the types of warnings Lee has been communicating for the past 4 years. She has written books, articles, columns and even a letter to Congress. The latter was cosigned by hundreds of her physician and mental health colleagues. She has consulted and coached anyone who seeks her expertise, including members of Congress and the media. She blogs. She tweets. She lectures. Her consistent message: Trump is unfit and dangerous and he’s getting worse. She tells anyone who will listen.
Getting people’s attention has been a struggle. Reporters from major newspapers in the country like the New York Times call Dr. Lee for background information and quotes, but any mention of her gets edited out of the articles. Heavyweights like Alan Dershowitz complain disingenuously about her: he entirely misrepresented her in a letter he sent to a Yale dean Lee reports to as a professor of both medical and law school students. (Yes, rat-fink Alan reported her to the principal. Dr. Lee did not get sent to detention.)
(In the spirit of reconciliation and academics Lee offered, via Twitter and otherwise, to co-host a symposium with Dershowitz at Yale Law, his alma mater. She suggested the two could duke out their differences in a debate and discussion format before an audience of medical and law students. They could make amends. Students would learn something important, lots of things. The silence from the Dershowitz camp is deafening.)
It has been a bare-fisted battle for Dr. Lee, unexpectedly crossing swords with professional groups like the American Psychiatric Association which suddenly became reticent about having its members carry out their professional duty to warn the public about dangers to health and safety. This was not an issue with the APA before Trump arrived on the scene. In fact, without any authority to do so (it is a voluntary professional society, not a medical board) they censured her and made entreaties to Big Media to avoid citing her as an expert. Political TV should have been begging her to appear and provide psychological insights and context for the loony tunes comments and incidents we’ve witnessed. Instead, they gave her the cold shoulder for years. A brief CNN appearance a year ago was an exception. Perceptive producers now have her on speed dial.
Even the New York Times fell prey to the apparent authority of a Medical Society with a Big Fancy name stridently decreeing that Lee and others like her were violating the “Goldwater Rule,” an ethical preclusion that doctors not diagnose patients they have not examined. That these docs were not diagnosing Trump didn’t seem to matter to the cultists in the APA. Indeed, these ethics-driven docs were properly describing Donald behaviors that could have lead, and have since lead, to significant loss of American lives.
Furthermore, the experts assessed his fitness to serve in his job: those types of evaluations do not require a personal interview. (In fact, personal interviewing in these cases is generally contraindicated.)
Journalists from that paper and others often called Dr. Lee for background information and obtained quotes from her, but her name and words were edited out of final drafts of stories. The result, a physician society without any real power to do so purposely and successfully impeded the flow of critical health and safety information to the public for years.
Dr. Trump said she is horrified at the APA’s stance against its own members who were trying to inform about Donald’s pathologies and warn of potential dangers attendant to keeping him in office. Their motivation is intriguing: what did a medical society have to gain by keeping citizens in the dark about danger?
Both doctors are disturbed about what they see as Trump’s undermining of experts and the devaluing of science relating to the pandemic. We have witnessed Donald silencing top epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci (and mocking and marginalizing Dr. Deborah Birx). Thereafter, and not unexpectedly from the doctors’ perspectives, Dr. Fauci received death threats from Trump supporters, who Dr. Trump refers to as his “cult.”
Dr. Trump concludes that Donald’s intention in dealing with experts like this duo is two-fold: first, he purposely demeans them as a distraction, to change the subject away from the grim and terrifying statistics of the pandemic or the other morass du jour. But he has another purpose too. By minimizing experts he appeals to the narcissism of the GOP and his cult: these personality disordered cretins think they’re all geniuses and don’t need experts anyhow.
In Western medicine, and particularly in the US, there is a separation between physical and mental health. It is socially acceptable to talk about a leader’s physical wellbeing, but discussion about their mental health or lack thereof is forbidden. Pneumonia won't damage the planet, says Dr. Trump, but Donald’s “myriad psychopathology” will.
The doctors agree on the prognosis: Trump will never get better, he will get worse. It’s not the job that will derail him: he doesn't do the work. He knows in his deepest self that he’s not who he pretends to be. It takes incredible energy to hide that from others and himself. It is enormously stressful. There is peril inherent in Trump being faced with his own inadequacies. The time is drawing nearer.
It can’t be easy being Mary Trump. She’s steps ahead of us watching for quicksand and trying to avoid the undertow. She draws through lines from her grandfather to the GOP and Donald’s cult. Whenever he is at a rally or addressing crowds, and likely at his daily pressers, his audience of one is Fred Trump. “I am the best,” he is telling his old man, “don’t kill me.”
Watch how Trump’s minions replicate and fall in line to please him, even lying blatantly to the press for him on national TV: Mark Meadows, Kayleigh McEnany, Kellyanne Conway. Or they refuse to disavow his misogynistic and racist comments: Jared Kushner, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz. “Look at us Daddy: we’re the best and most loyal. Don’t kill us.”
Now that Fred is gone, Donald has found surrogates who are delighted to serve the role of the domineering and punitive Daddy to Trump’s passive obedient son. Putin, Un and McConnell, a triad of powerful men to whom Donald is submissive and favor-seeking. His vulnerability is ours. What he trades for their acceptance and praise comes from our hides. We lose sleep at night wondering what it is he bargained away. The answers are just beyond our reach, in the unredacted version of Mueller’s Report, in the undeposed witnesses, hidden documents and spoliation of evidence.
The most chilling aspect of this for Dr. Trump is watching the old family dynamics play out globally. She watches the pattern repeat: what happened in a closed family setting has become magnified and is now played out on a societal level.
Where do we go from here, we plaintively wail. The data is there, the docs agree. Listen to the professionals. They find overwhelming evidence of his pathologies and incompetence (props to Robert Mueller and his team). We don't need to be in his family or serve as his therapist to judge. Diagnosis is irrelevant. His dangerousness and unfitness are what is critical. Look at what he is doing and how his behavior is shaping the people around him.
Look at the preventable deaths through the lenses of two experts. The doctors concur that if they had a patient acting like this president, a patient responsible for over 150,000 deaths, where the deaths could have been avoided if he had taken responsibility, they would declare him incompetent and take measures to remove him from where he can continue to cause grave harm.
Dr. Lee has posted their 20 minute discussion at bandylee.com.
It is dreadful but necessary, and affords some direction.
Recommend more than I have ever recommended.
BuzzFlash Update: Mary L. Trump concludes her book with this observation: “While thousands of Americans die alone. Donald touts stock market gains. As my father lay dying alone, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.”
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