On Monday morning, the day before Election Day, the woman who is the president of the World Mental Health Coalition and a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC where she comments on mental health, compared President Trump to Nazi Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, ranting that Hitler was better for various reasons, including that he “improved the daily life of his followers.”
Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and the co-author of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” tweeted, “Donald Trump is not an Adolf Hitler. At least Hitler improved the daily life of his followers, had discipline, and required more of himself to gain the respect of his followers. Even with the same pathology, there are varying degrees of competence.”
CNN and MSNBC's favorite "resistance" mental health expert has some thoughts on adolf hitler. pic.twitter.com/bCq2M9YzxC
— tsar becket adams (@BecketAdams) November 2, 2020
Lee later deleted the tweet and offered this explanation: “Okay, I have taken it down, since it has upset so many people and was not provoking thought but the opposite. Of note, my statement was about how little Donald Trump believes he needs to do to retain his followership, NOT to minimize Adolf Hitler’s atrocities.”
Okay, I have taken it down, since it has upset so many people and was not provoking thought but the opposite. Of note, my statement was about how little Donald Trump believes he needs to do to retain his followership, NOT to minimize Adolf Hitler’s atrocities.
— Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv (@BandyXLee1) November 2, 2020
Lee co-authored an essay in June in which the authors wrote:
The last few weeks have seen a marked and unmistakable deterioration in Donald Trump’s mental functioning. While his unfounded embrace of conspiracy theories have been a hallmark of his shaky capacity to assess external reality, in the past he only had to promote his views with enough gusto and repetition, buttressed by references to “people are saying” and Fox talking heads to seem to carry the day on social media. Many viewed him as, if not entirely plausible, at least consistent, confident, and entertaining.
But a succession of bizarre and outrageous assertions have been so obviously disturbed that even normally quiescent Republican leaders and military officers have felt compelled to break their silence. His judgment is badly damaged and his desperate flailing to regain his supremacy is impossible to miss. … President Trump is dangerous because of his psychology: his self-absorption, recklessness, cruelty, and a crippling need for power, control, and praise.
In May, Lee told the Yale Daily News that the “Goldwater Rule,” which states that “member psychiatrists should not give professional opinions about the mental state of someone they have not personally evaluated,” should be discarded, that the 2017 reaffirmation of the rule by the American Psychiatric Associationwas their attempt to “silence psychiatrists.” She termed the rule “alarming and unacceptable.”
Lee was one of a group of mental health professionals who co-signed an open letter to The New York Times in February 2017 in which they wrote:
Silence from the country’s mental health organizations has been due to a self-imposed dictum about evaluating public figures (the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 Goldwater Rule). But this silence has resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time. We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.
Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).
In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.
You may remember the psychiatrist calling Trump worse than Hitler as the same “expert” seen in the media earlier this year diagnosing POTUS as a “sociopath” pic.twitter.com/zEGMDNzlDq
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 2, 2020
this is literally a “at least the trains ran on time” take pic.twitter.com/Ndr9kHiDSt
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) November 2, 2020
Just incredible stuff here…my god. pic.twitter.com/Hq2QcMiuzN
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 2, 2020