in fact Donald Trump displays some of the most debilitating pathologies known to Psychiatry that wreak greater havoc on whatever uh Society Community uh institution or even family that they are part of uh but we but they are often also one some of the most successful but this is their survival mechanism if they do not have a core if they do not have a conscience or compassion they can mimic anything and then rise to the top then we see the consequences of their debilitation welcome to the Ken Harbaugh show my guest today is Dr Bandy Lee
who was a psychiatrist who authored the 2017 runaway New York Times bestseller the dangerous case of Donald Trump which warned about the dangers of Trump's mental instability and the threat at post to the country sheia since edited an update the more dangerous case of Donald Trump 40 psychiatrists and mental health experts warn a new Dr Lee the last time we talked you were sounding the alarm again about the threat that a second Trump term would pose to the country we're in it now what's your assessment well civilization is being dismantled and institutions are being taken
apart it's happen happening at the rate where destruction is assured and um they've already figured out that by the time courts respond the agencies that have been holding our society together will have been gutted closed or changed forever this is exactly what I had been afraid of in fact I had a vision of this early in 2017 which is why I felt so desperate to organize a conference that I did at Yale School of Medicine and then to assemble the nation's most renowned psychiatrists and psychologists to come together for the dangerous case of Donald Trump
um well Adam serwer of the Atlantic coined the phrase cruelty as the point I would take that further to say destruction is the point that is the nature of mental pathology death and destruction are its goal and whatever explanations or reasons it gives is the means um of course before Donald Trump I had been warning for a good 10 years about what was to come uh by uh warning against what I call structural violence which is the increasing inequality in society which gives rise to behavioral violence our um tolerance for violence and then attraction to
dangerous and violent leaders and so what we're seeing right now is the end product of a long process I really appreciate that your focus generally is on the pathology of violence and less on individuals Less on Donald Trump himself and I'm drawn to this this quote from a recent substack of yours where you wrote that is why I always emphasize that I was not really speaking about Donald Trump Donald Trump's are a dime a dozen in my practice but my job is to keep them contained to manage them and to protect Society from them you're
talking about some of the most violent criminals in society many of which you had as as patients or who you assessed as a a clinical psychiatrist you have a deep understanding of the pathology of violence and that is what made Donald Trump such an interesting subject for you as an academic matter exactly I wasn't speaking about an individual in particular or uh about a political matter I was purely addressing the issue from the phenom phenology of violence which I studied for 25 years and the public health ramifications it would have one of Donald Trump's particular
elements of genius and I I use that word in describing Donald Trump very sparingly but he seems to have figured out that if he delegates to people like Elon Musk and JD Vance some of the most egregious excesses of his Ambitions that he can skate by he can get an ovation at the Super Bowl while Elon Musk dismantles the government and while JD Vance sets the stage for defying the courts you talked about running rough shot over the law and waiting for it to catch up I think that now appears to be a deliberate strategy
they have figured out that they can move quicker than any other institution of American government especially those that exist to check executive power yes exactly that is what they do uh in fact Donald Trump displays some of the most debilitating uh pathologies known to Psychiatry that wreak greater havoc on whatever uh Society Community uh institution or even family that they are a part of uh but we but they are often also one some of the most successful it's not because they're gen Geniuses but this is their survival mechanism if they do not have a core
if they do not have a conscience or compassion they can mimic anything and then rise to the top then we see uh the consequences of their debilitation so um Adolf Hitler was called the seismograph of crowds because he could sense the mood of the uh the crowds before him better than anyone and directed to whichever end he has in mind which are always of course eventually destructive and self-destructive ends and um Donald Trump is no different he is able to sense what he needs to say and do in order to Garner the kinds of support
he needs from the crowds to uh simply hijack the agenda and make the unacceptable accepted many of us assumed that much of the energy of his second term would be directed towards performative politics and that he wouldn't actually get very much done he would come in as a lame duck president there would be ambitious Republicans around him who are looking for their second act but most of us didn't anticipate Elon Musk I'm wondering if if you did we just had Bill Crystal on I mean some of the smartest political thinkers right in this in this
Arena did not anticipate the power that Elon Musk would be given in fact I can't remember which guest I'm sure my audience will remember but we had someone say right after the election Elon Musk won't be able to do anything he doesn't actually have power the power lies with the russ votes and and the others a lot of us got that wrong um as a as a psychiatrist you must be fascinated by Elon Musk as well did you see any of this coming well I was uh extremely frightened of his rise because uh the kind
of magnetic attraction that both he and Donald Trump had uh indicates the level of pathology they both hold uh both see each other as kind of a parent figure that's that's what they seek and uh what they would not do for each other while they are idealizing each other of course that eventually turns out turns into devaluation that's the Primitive form of relating which also happened with Steve Bannon but until he is ousted he will wreak as much Havoc as possible and it's not just Elon Musk it's it's Benyamin nahu it's Vladimir Putin it's all
these figures who display the same kinds of defects which should have precluded such individuals from rising to the presidency in the first place which is why I felt so important uh that it was so important for mental health experts to speak up especially since we do not have a mechanism for screening out unfit individuals as we do for um corporate leadership for example or any other uh job that deals with life or death matters are you looking for something simple and delicious to add to your Wellness routine you've got to try manora honey for years
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setting join them in Italy this fall click the link in the show notes to learn more thanks I am way behind on understanding the the intricacies of these diagnosis so so can you pick aart I want to key on what you said about Elon and Trump seeing each other as as father figures and then you're bringing in Putin and others into that I find that fascinating and I think you're also pointing to an eventual dissolution of that because we can all see even though Trump can't how this is going to end How It Ends with
everyone who who enters his destructive black hole orbit but but how are they relating on an emotional level to each other well essentially the the kinds of uh wounds they are exhibiting have to do with uh developmental issues and so when um development is stunted when it is regressed because of stress uh which also happens to societies their um the the kinds of narcissistic traits become prominent it is uh a developmental wound where one is constantly SE searching for a parent figure uh I write more about this as a societal phenomenon not so much as
a diagnosis but um as what occurs in societ societies that are under stress uh in the book where I predicted Donald Trump's violence after the 2020 election uh in um profile of a Nation Trump's mind America's Soul where I stated that the two main dynamics that are happening in society are narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis now narcissistic symbiosis is when uh a narcissistically wounded in other words developmentally wounded leader uh Rises to uh public prominence they will magnetically attract uh others who are similarly narcissistically wounded because uh they're they're constantly looking for that ideal uh
parent figure who will take over take care of uh take care of them solve problems for them uh and and he knows because he knows intricately what that feeling is about that he would project himself as that savior figure that he he alone can solve everything he's better than all the experts but of course none of that is true he can't even do the ordinary job of a leader let alone uh any job as a panel of uh top mental health experts already assessed when when the Muller report came out it was perhaps not enough
to indict him but it was enough to give us the information we needed to do a fitness evaluation and he was found not to meet any of the criteria for Basic Fitness for any job which was alarming it is probably no surprise to you just hearing your description of give me the phrase again narcissistic uh wounds what's the uh the diagnosis well I call it narcissistic symbiosis when it happens between a leader follower uh relationship the kinds of magnetic attractions that happen through narcissistic pathology and therefore it's not a healthy um attraction it is not
a well-informed rational decision to follow a popular leader but in fact it is a compulsion an emotional compulsion out of emotional needs you probably know where I'm going then because it it can't be a surprise that JD Vance given his upbringing and backstory fits right in to this narcissistic symbiosis yes uh those who form a tyght bond with the current president is uh are are most likely to meet those criteria in that they are they too are looking for what Donald Trump is reporting to present and so uh they're they're very like-minded yes you you
didn't happen to overlap with h JD at Yale at all I missed him by a year although we we have run into each other you never met him did you no I have not he has not taken any of my courses which have to do with compassion and care for those who are imprisoned or those who are seeking Asylum so he hasn't taken any of my courses well I I I wish he had it would have served him well it would have served all of us well can you talk about Collective mental health which is
something we touched on in our last conversation but I think the country needs needs a dose of it right now probably more than well more than ever in my lifetime you have to go back to maybe the 60s or the Civil War to find a time when we are as anxious as we are now yes well from reading my subst you may have recognized that I have shifted Direction a little bit and that I truly believe that we are at a point where we need to address the source of the problem now the source of
the problem is that we have structures in place societally nationally and internationally that facilitate the rise of unfit leaders and I have been describing uh well the the psychology and the dangerousness of Donald Trump uh what that would induce in society uh that's what's described in my last book the psychology of trump contagion how symptoms can spread throughout society and and basically make uh basically effectuate shared psychosis now we need truly to work on the structures that have given rise to this and uh and and shape the way we have organized our society to be
able to prevent this from happening in the future and of course we need to do it rather rapidly um time is running out uh I'm calling it my curriculum for one world or none trying to bring people together uh Institute structures that uh that would help you unify rather than divide and uh to work on healing our Collective mental health so that we can arrive at a place where our decisions will be life affirming and not pathology or death promoting can you give us a a concrete example of one of the steps that that we
may take to to get there I hope the information or disinformation ecosystem is is part of this prescription I haven't read the book yet I'm going to I'm going to order it but what are what are some of the things we should be doing yes absolutely as you could tell already uh the the misleading lies propaganda misinformation disinformation all have a role in um causing the deterioration of our Collective mental health in fact the world mental health Coalition which I've LED for the last seven years um put out a declaration of freedom of mind and
that has to do with the need to safeguard our mental health in order to safeguard all the rest of our freedoms and rights um that is not emphasized enough either by the United Nations or uh in even in the Constitution and that is what uh needs to be known more about and why health education is so critical uh at this time as at any time I've been doing mostly Consulting behind the scenes now in fact the book that you mentioned the more dangerous case of Donald Trump has been updated to include not 40 psychiatrists and
mental health experts who worn a new but now 50 who are advising 50 of the top uh mental health experts in the country who are providing their expertise to whoever would be willing to consult us be they lawmakers policy makers Military Officers I'm sure they're suffering greatly right now um that mental health is still front and center and crucial to what we are suffering through right now and we have the kinds of methods and interventions that apply through any field uh could deal the problem well Dr Lee thank you so much for for for sharing
your wisdom we'll put all of those links in the show notes below and I'm sure we will talk again soon thank you thank you very much for having me Can't Get Enough Midas check out the Midas Plus substack for adree articles reports podcasts daily Recaps from Ron filipowski and more sign up for free now at Midas plus.com ah [Music]
