B X Lee -- The Solution is Nothing Less than Our Recognition of Our Own Power
‘The Most Dangerous Days of Our Lifetimes’
The Solution is Nothing Less than Our Recognition of Our Own Power
Here are excerpts from my recent interview with the coeditor of MindSite News:
Diana Hembree: When we last spoke a year ago, you observed that Trump had deteriorated greatly from his first term, and that the level of danger has vastly increased. How have things changed since?
Dr. Bandy Lee: We predicted his dramatic deterioration since the very early days in 2016, when my colleagues and I began to speak of how someone with his psychological structure should never be given power. The factor that is most responsible for his decline is the granting of his pathological desire…. That his grandiosity would transmogrify into grotesque delusions of grandeur, and his narcissism into violent, insatiable megalomania, was only a matter of course, once he occupied the most powerful position on the planet.In May, when you and 19 other psychiatrists and clinicians called for … White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella to conduct a neuropsychiatric examination and brief Congress on the results. You called attention to an earlier statement by 36 medical experts that was entered into the Congressional Record and called for Trump’s removal from office for reasons of mental instability and his unchecked authority to launch nuclear weapons. What was the outcome?
I signed the statement with 35 of the greatest medical authorities in the country in February of this year, even before the war on Iran, and we were hearing that a large number of senators were in agreement with it, including Republicans. However, none would put their name to the cause—not one—each deferring to others. This is an effect of what I have been calling, “Trump Contagion,” which affects Democrats, too….You wrote recently in your Substack column that “the debate over whether Trump has ‘frontotemporal dementia’ or ‘psychosis’ is a distraction” and that he should be evaluated —with or without his consent —for dangerousness and the need to remove him from access to weapons and an office that he is not qualified to hold…. what are your recommendations to Congress and the American public?
… Endlessly discussing possible diagnoses, with their complicated terms and impressive-sounding symptoms, is a hindrance to removing an unfit president. What people need to know are their mental health rights —that dangerousness is the issue, not diagnosis, and someone who is a danger to the public needs to be quickly contained and fully evaluated. This is the medical standard of care.[Diagnosing from afar gives the impression that a full assessment is possible without a proper evaluation—which should occur over days in the hospital, involuntarily, especially if one refuses (refusal is a sign of greater dangerousness, not less). A powerful political position does not make one immune from medical need—in fact, access to political influence and powerful weapons makes one more dangerous and more important to be subject to medical convention and intervention. We should treat this as seriously, if not more, than a coma, since a comatose patient would do less damage. To ignore these facts is to abandon medical neutrality.]
What we require is a shift in consciousness, and I urge Congress and the public to see our current crisis as the public mental health problem that it is.
What impact have the Epstein files and Trump’s years-long friendship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had on his reputation?
The false belief that Donald Trump—an adjudicated sexual offender—would expose and hold to account sex traffickers is based in a very powerful dynamic. It is most commonly called “identification with the aggressor,”… which essentially describes how victims of domestic abuse, cults, hostage situations, and institutional abuse anticipate and comply with the abuser, believing this would bring safety…. this is why there is such a mixed reaction among Trump followers regarding both the Epstein files and electing a convicted felon.
Besides attacking Iran and Venezuela, Trump has talked about taking over other countries such as Greenland and Cuba. How do his psychological ills inform this behavior?
We know that Donald Trump is himself a victim of abuse. He has to dominate, control, and attack preemptively in order to feel safe…. Placing him in an office he is unfit for has only ballooned his expectations, making him angrier and more vengeful over his own incompetence, and has brought unprecedented destruction to our country…. Holding him accountable is exactly what we need to reduce his symptoms, and since his illness does not eliminate the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, he will not qualify for “not guilty by reason of insanity.”
Most Americans opposed the war on Iran and wanted the Epstein files released. The No Kings marches attracted tens of millions of protesters, but that has not moved the needle on the Trump Administration’s embrace of authoritarianism.
The needle has not moved because the source of the problem has not been correctly identified. The large numbers need to be complemented with … detailed mental health knowledge. Mental health experts can advise on effective strategy, because they understand the underlying dynamics…. I proposed some actions in the past, but these are minor compared to the consciousness that the people could adopt: that they are the president’s employers who have the right to demand competent, independent expertise and intervention.
Many judges have ruled against the Trump administration, yet the guardrails for democracy continue to fall due to the decisions of the rightwing majority on the Supreme Court.
Now people can see how important mental capacity is as a prerequisite for any rational system to work. No court can function without the basic building blocks of mental capacity, and Donald Trump has spread his incapacity through “Trump Contagion,” or prolonged exposure to a severely symptomatic person in an influential office. This has resulted in propagating his paranoia, violence-proneness, detachment from reality, and delusional “religious” beliefs.
The end result of this contagion is shared psychosis —folie à deux when occurring in a pair, or folie à millions when happening by the millions. The treatment is to remove the exposure.Our current inability to remove a mentally-incapacitated president is not because of flaws in the 25th Amendment or any other provision, but because we have allowed this exposure to continue for too long. Now, our nation collectively acts as if we were psychotic —in ways that our progeny will wonder what happened to us. When a population is mentally-incapacitated, no system can work, no matter how well-constructed. This is why my focus has been on educating the public, understanding how our mental health is affected, and ultimately elevating our level of consciousness.
With self-awareness, we can fix almost any human-generated problem.
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee will hold her next planning meeting for Survival University on Monday, July 27, 2026, at 6 p.m. EDT / 3 p.m. PDT. A paid subscription will include you in the invitations.
Discussion about this post
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/the-most-dangerous-days-of-our-lifetimes
Donald J Trump now claims to have talked with Teddy Roosevelt, combining delusions of grandeur, confabulation and sundowning for the trifecta of frontal temporal lobe dementia.
Despite whatever psychological problems Trump has, he is still a Criminal in every other aspect, and should be treated as such. It's really hard to understand why Americans are allowing Trump to remain in presidency, to rule over them, unless Americans are the ones with the real psychological problems, and are horribly inept at getting control over the situation. It's such an embarrassment to be an American anymore!!