B X Lee -- The Ongoing Presidential Psychiatric Emergency
The Ongoing Presidential Psychiatric Emergency
Will We Overtake Mental Pathology, before It Overtakes Us?
I was forwarded this astute video, which I quote in full:
MAGA cult isn’t a political movement; it’s a mental illness. There is a psychological reason for that. Forensic psychiatrist [Bandy] Lee at Yale School of Medicine spent years studying what happens when a psychologically dangerous leader gains mass influence.
She found that leaders’ mental pathology does not stay confined to the leader. It spreads to his followers through emotional bonds, through rallies, through constant exposure. It induces delusions, paranoia, and a propensity for violence in people who were previously psychologically healthy. Psychiatrists call this, folie à millions, or the madness of millions. Sixty-two courts ruled the 2020 election was not stolen. Trump’s own attorney general said there was no fraud. His own Department of Justice confirmed it and they still believe the election was stolen. This is not a political opinion. This is an induced delusion. This is why his followers stormed the Capitol and tried to commit an insurrection.
This is why they excused federal agents for killing Americans in the streets. This is why nothing that happens will ever change their minds. Lee found that the treatment is the same as any contagion: remove the exposure. The symptoms begin to fade when the source is gone, which is exactly why Trump cannot stop holding rallies. He knows what happens when the exposure stops. The delusion starts to break. These people are not true believers. They are addicted to their delusion. The delusion feels better than their real lives do, and they will try to burn everything down before they give up that delusion.
Now that we understand this, what shall we do about it?
The above Lawrence O’Donnell Show featured two of my books, and here I quote O’Donnell:
On the 132nd day of his war, Donald Trump returned from the NATO summit in Turkey proclaiming himself a peacemaker: “… I would say I should have won that award more than anybody that ever received the Nobel Peace Prize because nobody settled wars. I settled eight of them, because of a certain type of personality….”
He does have a certain type of personality. He is right about that. It is the subject of the book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, published in 2017, which in its latest edition is now titled, The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 50 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew. The mental health experts … whose opinions appear in those books generally agree … that Donald Trump’s personality could [not] in any way help him settle wars….
While Donald Trump was proclaiming himself to be a great peacemaker to the reporters on his plane, the war he started was still raging in Iran, being no closer to settlement than it was on the first day of Donald Trump’s war. The New York Times reports: “The US military said overnight that it had struck more than 170 targets in Iran. During the previous 48 hours, a significant uptick”….
Iran also said it had fired at U.S. targets in the Gulf nations of Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, [and threatened] to expand its attacks to other American military facilities in the region….
Donald Trump has said they want to make a deal so badly—those exact words—almost every day of his now 132 days of war. He has been lying every single time he has said that. And at the same time, Iran has demonstrated two things with absolute consistency:… One, Iran will not surrender. And two, Iran does not want to make a deal so badly…. And Donald Trump has shown himself to be desperate to make a deal, which is why he agreed to a memo of understanding with Iran, which was full of concessions, immediate concessions to Iran with no concessions to the United States by Iran. That memo of understanding called for a sixty-day ceasefire that has been violated repeatedly….
And so when asked what he is going to do next in his war in effect, he said: “I don’t know.”
Now that we know the emperor has no clothes, will we mobilize the courage to confront him? Only then shall we see how quickly he can crumble.
It has taken nearly a decade for public discourse to begin speaking our language, with the same intensity and urgency we tried to convey, recognizing that what we are dealing with is a mental health pandemic—not exceptional talent for mobilizing crowds, a unique personality that works, or political “genius”. Mental pathology, by its very nature, does not work. It destroys self-awareness, corrodes relationships, and ultimately consumes the very systems upon which it feeds. This unique feature of mental pathology is what mental health experts have been trying to warn against.
Some may have believed that they could harness Donald Trump’s pathology for their own ends: self-enrichment, advancement to positions they could not have dreamed of, and—yes—extreme policies such as Project 2025. Observing how he “succeeds” where propaganda and disinformation fall short, they may have considered symptom contagion an expedient way to detach large populations from reality, leading them to embrace not only policies that impoverish them, but even those that threaten their survival. But this catastrophic error in belief arises from ignorance.
Donald Trump became an instrument for oligarchs, authoritarians, and those who profit from social disintegration. Yet, they failed to consider that—like all pathology—he is a “weapon” that will turn against them. Like every disease left unchecked, it eventually turns upon its host. Those who imagined they could wield those forces now find themselves subject to them—and we are now entering end times.
He has destroyed our last chance to restrict global warming to manageable levels, has vastly accelerated nuclear dangers, has decimated the fragile existing World Order that took generations to build, and he has now ignited World War III and endless wars to come…. Structural reforms are indispensable and would solve many problems, but we will not get anywhere as long as a mental health pandemic is raging; we must contain the emergency first.
We must remove the offending agent. No physician would substitute rehabilitation for containment of the pathogen. Lunatics have taken over the asylum, and they must be restrained from inflicting far greater harm, through whatever lawful mechanisms are available: there is hospitalization, incarceration, and removal from office. The people must demand no less. The last time there was unacceptable madness in leadership, there was a revolution.
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee will hold her next “emergency psychiatric meeting”—an ongoing emergency makes it more emergent, not less—on Friday, July 17, 2026, at 6 p.m. EDT / 3 p.m. PDT. She will also hold her next planning meeting for Survival University on Monday, July 27, 2026, at 6 p.m. EDT / 3 p.m. PDT. Paid subscribers will receive a link an hour before meeting times.
Discussion about this post
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-presidential-psychiatric
Dr. Lee, I am grateful for your work. I must say, however, that Trump was unfit long before his first term. As you're aware, top military personnel (probably some among those Hegstetch has removed) warned against him, yet he was installed. Huge mistake.
What is so alarming is that he is still in charge today. He's obviously severely impaired. Even his most lenient predecessor would have condemned this blatant show of disregard for America and our position among other global influential countries. He has literally pushed the USA into (one of his favorite phrases) functioning as a "sh*thole" country.
So, who benefits? Part of it is obvious, as he intends to create a legacy of wealth for himself and his twisted, greedy, spoiled, and hedonistic brood. I suspect, however, that when he falls, they will also fall. I think I read somewhere that Hitler's relatives changed their last names. I was told that Osama's (USA-educated) relatives changed their names and were flown out of the USA (by a very high-ranking US political operative) to safety.
Urban legends, or no? Doesn't matter because we are still dealing with this crackpot and he's got to be reigned in. For the sake of America, he must be stopped. For the sake of the world, he must be prevented from doing further damage. As it stands currently, he's been "caught" multiple times at purely criminal deeds, yet he remains free. That suggests that he is serving the will and purpose of individuals who have for generations ruled the world via money, wars, trickery, and outright thievery. The question is, "Who (or which secret groups) hold the master key" to this orange monstrosity?
All the different establishments are in complete denial, mostly because they are benefiting from it. Like Musk and his gaggle of techno want to be god-kings, individual rights are seen as an impediment their self proclaimed superiority and right to rule.