Dr Bandy Lee deconstructs Trump's insane Time Magazine interview.

[0:20] it's sunday october 4 2026 i'm anthony davis welcome to the weekend show where we make the [0:26] time to consider the news of the week you can support my work and independent journalism on [0:31] substack at the anthony davis i'm pleased to welcome back physician and forensic and social [0:37] psychiatrist and world expert on violence dr bandy lee as we continue our series on the nuclear [0:43] threat of donald trump her updated book the much more dangerous case of donald trump describes how [0:49] the president's worsening impairments while holding the most powerful position on the planet [0:54] pose many existential dangers for humankind dr lee welcome back to the weekend show thank you for [1:02] having me back we have a lot to talk about today uh each week he provides us with so much material for [1:09] for assessment and analysis and this last week has been no exception um i want to deconstruct the time [1:16] magazine interview that trump gave in just a little while but first a lot of people get in [1:21] touch with us to talk about republicans who have been committed to donald trump and we've had trump [1:29] around for 10 or 12 years now in in politics and they're starting to realize that maybe that that [1:36] kind of dream of making america great again is not quite going as planned and that some of his promises [1:42] are false promise were false promises and uh affordability obviously is the major issue that [1:48] is affecting people uh just simply the price of gas is the very kind of basic one courtesy of donald trump's [1:56] war in iran which was his choice so what what do we do with people who don't really know where to put [2:05] their vote who maybe are hereditary and traditional republican voters what are they going to do are they [2:12] able to kind of cross the aisle and vote for a democrat well i think this is an opportune time [2:20] to have them see the reality that perhaps that they have been blocking out of their minds one of the [2:28] reasons why i wish to talk about this topic is because i've had a full um course of experience from [2:38] the very beginning of the first trump presidency when i reached out to every trump supporter who [2:44] would engage me who wrote to me more than one line i had befriended them wrote them [2:52] long messages and have had email exchanges phone conversations spent hours with trump supporters in [2:59] fact and at that time they were still able to question who he really was you know they would reach [3:05] out to me saying you know how could you um say such awful things about our president and and so i would [3:13] engage them and they were at times quite surprised to find that i wasn't um antagonistic i wasn't trying to [3:23] uh defeat someone they elected but um but truly medically concerned and and i loved our country as much as [3:34] they did and i also believe in god and so i connected with them from a position of faith as well [3:41] uh i was able to engage them but over the course of the first trump presidency they were no longer [3:47] reachable to them i was um an enemy the devil uh a chinese agent um uh a gender with uh using the c [4:01] word and uh they could not get over uh the initial barriers to to engage with me as a human being [4:10] i feel that this may be a time when they may be able to engage again and um i say so partly because [4:20] major figures such as uh uh former trump supporter tucker carlson came out saying he needs the 25th [4:29] amendment and he um and and he himself was disillusioned he was part of the machinery of [4:35] deception he said which i found uh quite self-observant and uh carl rove recently a right-wing strategist [4:45] who um wrote a piece in the wall street journal saying that uh he was now going to vote democrat [4:53] because he's tired of the crazy so people who were conditioned to shut down their own perceptions uh [5:02] close their eyes and ears and only listen to donald trump which is how he conditioned them [5:10] are now beginning to break away and this is a very um also very delicate time because they put him in [5:20] office um not to have wars and to be able to afford groceries as you were saying uh and and yet uh their [5:30] well their convictions were shattered and their convictions came uh despite all the evidence they [5:38] had before him before them uh and and that's also why we came forth very early as mental health [5:47] professionals because it was important to reach people early um we saw what was happening that their [5:55] minds were essentially being hijacked uh we were seeing that as it was happening that is one of the [6:04] reasons why mental health professionals are the only uh professionals who have the authority to detain [6:10] individuals before something happens law enforcement usually intervenes afterward but we have uh the [6:18] authority and practice of detaining people if they are danger to the public when we see the course of their [6:26] behavior um ahead of time and so uh and so well um that's why i feel that it's important for uh former trump [6:42] supporters to now know they probably can see now that we were not being partisan we were not being uh [6:50] political and that we were opposing their their chosen candidate but we distinctly saw medical [6:58] problems of uh of psychological dangerousness and uh inability to govern unfitness for the office that [7:08] was of just as much importance to them as to uh democrats who were perhaps not supporting him for [7:17] political reasons it's so interesting you know you've been proven right you and your your group have [7:23] been proven right it's clear for everybody to see now but they're still with some people and i tucker [7:30] carlson i find completely disingenuous i think he wants to run for president in 2028 so he's probably on [7:37] his own track but i do recognize that there are republicans now probably because we're just a few weeks away [7:42] from the midterms who are panicking and and and can see that this approval rating is down to 32 percent [7:50] and dropping they can see trump making less and less sense he really cannot hold a thought or a sentence [7:59] and they can also see this this plan for america actually causing it more harm than good and then the [8:11] lies about the investment that's coming into the united states i mean trump said a couple of days ago [8:16] that there were 99 car plants being built in the us well that there are no car plants being built in [8:24] the us one is being rebuilt but i mean it's completely untrue and so to have him campaigning and effectively [8:35] putting himself on the ballot for the midterms even though he isn't or asking people to vote for him [8:40] or for his candidates in in that fashion suggests a level of of of um delusion that is probably far [8:49] greater than any of his supporters thought possible and it's not just a matter of uh causing um harm [8:59] because he he made errors in judgment or that he um espouses some ideas that others disagree with [9:09] it's that he driven by mental pathology which is uh which has as one of its components emotional compulsion [9:18] that he would be absolutely driven to destruction because the goal of any kind of disorder is um destruction [9:30] and death and uh of all organisms and uh so uh so his his decision making will be based on countering [9:44] reality countering uh what our nation needs and hoodwinking people so that they will support his uh [9:54] irresistible compulsion to destruction and that's regardless of what he believes and regardless of [10:02] his perhaps even um modicum of desire somewhere to be good or to do good uh all that is negated by [10:13] the pathology that that drives him and and that will be beyond uh anyone's imagination because we're [10:22] not used to this level of disorder being in power and i fear that well for years and decades to come we [10:31] will be grappling with the level of destruction that he has wrought on this nation and uh you know as [10:43] mental health experts because we're in the health field and because we deal with health versus disease [10:50] um this is what we this is what this is why we felt such urgency to warn the public and came out with [10:59] such uh exceptional uh public um uh public call for attention to this this area we are many years later [11:13] now from when your first book came out and you first warned the public and and and that is a problem [11:20] for america and the rest of the world the fact that people are very slow on the uptake that people [11:28] fail to trust and respect expertise and we've seen that obviously in the way trump runs his his [11:36] government but my biggest fear and it's certainly been exposed in the last week is that this pathology [11:43] that you describe also exists in quite a few other yes senior figures and he brought a bunch of these [11:51] guys together for this ai conference this last week the you know musk and zuckerberg and you know all of [11:58] them nothing really came of this conference trump refuses to regulate the ai industry despite the call [12:06] from from these uh you know wealthy tech giants to the point that it's almost like they're doing a deal [12:17] with the devil they they need him they don't want it regulated but they recognize that regulation they [12:23] don't want it regulated from a finance perspective but they recognize that there will need to be some [12:28] regulation trump fundamentally doesn't understand what ai is so he's totally the wrong president for the job [12:36] and and and so we find ourselves in a in a situation now this is extremely unhealthy uh it's not going to [12:45] be literally uh an agreement with the devil but uh it will seem so in the level of destructiveness [12:52] uh the ai explosion is not necessarily harmful in itself but it will be harmful because it is [13:02] happening under this individual under his dangerous psychology where he will promote the worst policies possible [13:10] and the most nefarious actors in this field will grab this opportunity to advance their agendas [13:18] that would not have a chance of passing under any rational president and that is why he is uh the greatest [13:28] gift to every enemy of the nation domestic and foreign but um for the american people he can do no good [13:39] and and that's that's almost fix uh that's almost fixed into his psychology so even if he doesn't [13:48] press the red button he's almost bringing about human destruction by refusing to get on top of [13:57] artificial intelligence which he's taken it upon himself to rename super intelligence to try and take [14:05] away the stigma as he said in his in his speech at the un that it makes it sound fake if it's called [14:11] artificial and we all know his love affair with the word fake so and and i'm hoping that no media or [14:19] industry take up si as a concept because that will only give him further credence but it is a mess [14:28] and a lot of these individuals and zuckerberg is a perfect example we've seen him under the spotlight [14:33] grilled in senate hearings completely untrustworthy musk exactly the same caused no end of damage [14:43] domestically and internationally with the shutting down of usaid and and again has government contracts [14:51] and now has been handed over a fair share of the military to manage as well i mean this really is a [14:57] case of evil geniuses taking over the weapons of mass destruction well we are facing many crises as you [15:06] know in fact in the scholarly literature it's called poly crisis now and um uh our environmental dangers [15:16] nuclear dangers dangers from ai pandemics um global wars um just uh escalating structural violence which i [15:27] have warned against um far before donald trump so donald trump is a product as well as a cause of our [15:36] current conditions but he's of course an accelerant uh being in his office and he is uh essentially [15:45] exacerbating all these crises all these existential crises and that's part of the destructive cycle [15:52] that i spoke of that uh pathology gets us into there will be no end to the destructiveness until [15:59] it is contained from without so many people are rejoicing right now that his popularity is declining and [16:08] and that he's facing um midterms that are uh unfavorable to him but but it's not enough [16:15] yes but how many times have we been down this path before yes there will be no consequences unless there [16:24] is action and uh and pressure is applied from the outside we have seen how pressure has worked in the [16:34] past when he was taken off of uh um social media platforms all of a sudden all these um republicans were [16:43] denouncing him uh when he was uh when there was the black lives matter protests which are which were uh [16:51] the biggest in history at the time and he himself said you know if i lose the election maybe i will have [16:57] to concede and and he meant it in that if there's overwhelming public pressure uh then then he will [17:06] concede he will concede far faster than people may realize but he's he's doubling down presently [17:14] he's doubling down he's in a he's in a little bubble i mean he doesn't really know i mean when [17:21] he was in ireland recently and one of the reporters asked him if what he thought about the protests for [17:26] his presence in ireland he said protests i haven't seen any protests maybe they're protesting about how [17:32] happy they are that i'm here i mean completely different perspective on on everything that that [17:40] journalists present him with well he has delusional beliefs for a reason delusional beliefs do not [17:48] come about because they see some other kind of evidence or um hold truly different beliefs it is [17:56] to try to avoid the pain of reality uh and and the reality is is actually too painful for him to [18:07] recognize and um and yet it's critical for him to face reality and and he has to be pressured to be [18:17] able to do so that is why the no kings protests this uh october 17th is going to be critically important [18:24] for the midterms because he has to be contained somehow uh if left to his own devices with his waning [18:32] popularity and everything is failing in all his policies including the war in iran and his tariffs [18:39] and uh affordability um this will be the most dangerous time in the nation's history violent [18:47] individuals are not dangerous when they are um uh feeling uh strong in fact they are the most dangerous [18:57] when they are feeling the weakest um violence itself is a reaction formation against feelings of uh lack [19:05] of ability or lack of power not of strength and so these are the times to watch out for and not to be [19:15] complacent and we've been also trying to urge congress members to start hearings now when even right-wing [19:24] commentators are talking about his having not having mental capacity and over two-thirds of the population [19:32] is believing he is mentally unfit this is the time to push uh and and to do whatever they felt they could [19:41] not do at other times yes well the shadow hearings that have been going on i think have been quite useful [19:49] and there's nothing to stop democrats doing this but making donald trump's mental health the absolute [19:57] central point of discussion and bringing in experts such as yourself or at least quoting you [20:04] i want to ask you um about these other individuals in trump's orbit who you know there is this cultural [20:14] thing in the us that rich people must be smart and and success is measured by wealth and things that [20:23] you know are unnatural from from me coming from from europe we have quite a different view of the wealthy [20:29] especially in england but it is very much the case that a lot of these individuals are a little crazy [20:37] themselves and and they carry some extreme views many are on the far right and and have these [20:47] delusions of grandeur and they have this whole other kind of oligarch existence that the rest of us [20:53] don't really understand and i want to ask you about an interview that peter teal gave this last week [20:59] just a brief sentence that he said where he was being asked about you know are you can might you might [21:06] your work be considered evil and he said well the thing about evil is that at least you're doing [21:14] something and if you're doing something then surely that is good and it was the simplest sentence empty [21:26] of kind of any intellectual depth but it to me was an excuse for how he manages to exist as a as a [21:36] co-owner of palantir and other companies that you know do data mining and and and ai and everything [21:44] else and and you know weapon systems too that that these people kind of know that they're doing wrong [21:53] that they know that this is evil and yet to them the benefits kind of outweigh the negatives even [22:02] selfishly well that's the psychology of violent offenders that i've been studying my whole career [22:12] that uh because individuals who are violent and i would also say those who are committing structural [22:20] violence in other words uh contributing to the vast uh gap between the rich and the poor which is the [22:28] deadliest form of violence by the way far more people die from inequality than uh all behavioral violence [22:37] combined um about at least 10 times more people die from all the wars civil conflict um suicides homicides [22:49] uh mass violence put off all put together so uh so i see them as violent offenders as well [22:57] um well they have the additional uh advantage if you will uh of being able to put in structures [23:08] that uh that commit the violence just like uh you know a president can put in policies that kills tens of [23:16] millions of millions of people um over time such as the um the display yeah and then the climate [23:25] policies of course which and the climate policies which will kill hundreds of hundreds of millions of [23:30] people yeah and uh eventually uh billions of lives could be affected and um well uh this kind of violence is [23:41] far greater than you know just going out and punching out one person at a time yes um or even a mass [23:49] shooting incident or massacre cannot rival this level of violence and so the psychology of violence is [23:57] that they cannot be productive uh usually um violent individuals are in fact uh we've discussed before [24:04] how donald trump is low energy low action um low level of ideas um coming from him uh and so they uh [24:16] counteract that uh state of inaction with dramatic action which in their view is productivity uh but of [24:25] course there's a vast difference between productive action and destructive action and uh and productive [24:34] action generally is uh self-generated it comes from love of others and love of society to try to contribute [24:43] um and and is uh essentially generated from love of self well those who are violent um are are often [24:56] lacking in love of themselves above all and uh because they lack self-love and probably lacked most likely [25:08] lacked um love at the correct time of development uh the unconditional love that will approve of [25:16] everything they do and uh and just simply uh value them for for existing that's that's critical to every um [25:26] young uh life and when you do not receive that you don't have much of a reserve of self-love [25:36] and uh that also means self-respect so you try to uh you try to wrest respect from others and you find [25:46] that you don't have much ability either they look for respect and when they do not get it their next [25:54] substitute is fear so that's why people become violent we've seen with with these oligarch and tech [26:04] genius so that's you know i use that in the loosest term uh characters and elon musk is one of them [26:10] and we know this history with him and his father and you know the little that we understand about [26:15] these families but both peter teal and elon musk in interviews often talk about life after humanity on [26:26] earth and they and and peter teal especially is kind of like well maybe you know we're not supposed to [26:32] survive and and elon musk wants to build a colony on on mars because he's kind of done with this place [26:39] and and and you don't really hear people talking in those terms and yet there's something about these [26:47] very wealthy tech giants that arguably forces them to kind of think beyond planet earth is that [26:59] because they know they're destroying planet earth and that they're part of the problem and that they [27:05] need to save themselves or is it that they genuinely think that exploring other galaxies is is you know [27:13] healthy for humanity i think for uh some time he there there was a false belief that these [27:21] narcissistic individuals these uh obnoxious personalities uh should be tolerated because [27:28] they bring genius to their work and um uh but but we now see and recognize that uh their their [27:37] personality disorders get in the way of uh productivity and and true contribution to society [27:46] and i think they're seeing more and more how they're destructive and they can only be destructive [27:51] even if they purport to um uh contribute to space exploration to development of technology eventually it [28:00] will be used for destructive purposes and so uh this is something that i actually have [28:08] warned against uh decades before donald trump came along that with increasing structural violence we [28:15] will see these mental health effects both in society and in individuals who are in charge who represent [28:25] much of society and and i think the united states diverged greatly from europe because its economic [28:32] system diverged greatly starting in the late 70s uh the united states unlike europe which continued much of [28:41] the new deal philosophy and the great society philosophy so america went to the free market capitalism [28:49] which kind of it changed people's minds and and their perspective it changes people's psychology [28:56] into thinking in terms of superior and inferior and so it becomes a very competitive dog-eat-dog world where [29:06] you have to be superior somehow it worsens racism it worsens sexism uh because when there's economic [29:14] inequality you look for other ways to to make yourself superior and uh so you look for um unchangeable [29:22] characteristics such as your race or gender uh race meaning uh skin color um and uh and as you know [29:32] these things just worsened in the united states over time uh in direct uh correlation with the rise in [29:42] inequality and gap between the rich and the poor and i had warned that this kind of increase in [29:49] structural violence would give rise to a poor state of mental health for the population which gave rise [29:56] to people being attracted to someone who was mentally impaired as donald trump if people were healthy [30:05] and and well um satisfied and and content because uh with poor with poor mental health you essentially [30:15] mentally suffer um people would not seek someone with the kinds of defenses and destructive impulses [30:23] as uh donald trump uh and i also uh warned that we would have increasing unfit leaders um who uh who [30:34] create the conditions that worsen the mental health health of society uh help destroy society i mean look at [30:42] the things that donald trump has taken away he has basically um destroyed the centers for disease [30:49] control and prevention which was a model agency that uh that changed the world in terms of disease control [30:58] uh he has um taken away food stamps or or support for nutrition for uh the poorest americans he's taken away [31:09] um health care he's he's uh i mean it's almost as if he gets off on the suffering it's like the suffering for him [31:20] is the point and it makes him feel a little better makes him feel powerful people like mark zuckerberg [31:30] knew for years that instagram was addictive and young children were being groomed on these platforms like [31:38] facebook and and and and was not completely honest about the research that they had commissioned and [31:46] only now through various legal cases and and senate hearings and everything else is starting to you [31:54] know make amends and and and actually look at these things but you know how do these individuals sit [32:02] with this knowledge and not do anything about it is it they're probably delighted at the knowledge it [32:09] gives them a sense of power uh you know this this drive is something most of us cannot quite [32:15] understand but for individuals who are traumatized or somehow um arrested in development they feel that [32:23] they need to have power over people dominate others and cause suffering because even the cause of suffering [32:31] seeing other people suffer gives them a sense of control and domination and power uh that they [32:39] feel that they cannot get anywhere else and so even mark zuckerberg who created this vast industry of [32:46] social media um is actually an impaired individual who cannot contribute no matter what he has created [32:55] contribute in a positive sense yes it's so it's so interesting and now of course we heard from this [33:03] speech by pete hegseth again another of these kind of characters that you describe [33:09] that the the military planning going forward is being handed over to elon musk and to palmer lucky and [33:16] to newt gingrich of all people to to direct the the kind of future of the armed forces um dark times [33:25] undoubtedly we have to take a quick break but i want to come back and talk to you about this interview [33:31] that trump gave with time magazine and some of the interesting responses that we read we'll do that [33:37] next on the weekend show now to a story affecting millions of american families the washington post [33:44] reports citing fbi data that americans over 60 reported 7.7 billion dollars lost to fraud last year [33:53] a rise of nearly 360 percent in five years among the most common schemes criminals impersonating [34:00] medicare exploiting a system so complicated that fake officials can sound entirely convincing and once [34:07] the money moves it is rarely recovered the expert advice is simple verify always never act on an [34:15] unsolicited call about your medicare which is why i'll point you to our partner chapter chapter is [34:21] the only medicare advisor that compares every plan nationwide the service is free takes under 20 [34:28] minutes and has saved people an average of eleven hundred dollars a year if you're on medicare or [34:33] soon will be make one trusted call chapter at 334 441 3570 that's 334 441 3570 we're back with dr bandy lee [34:48] i'm anthony davis um dr lee donald trump sat down for an interview uh not something he does that often [34:55] certainly with the corporate media we know he likes to phone into fox and friends and sometimes they can't [35:00] get him off the phone but in this instance he gave 75 minutes to time magazine and some people might [35:06] question why he chose time magazine i can only really put that down to his him being a man of the 80s [35:13] and and to be on the cover of time you know holds a lot of status for somebody like him would you agree [35:20] with that that's probably true some of the answers that he gave were so meandering and and were a real [35:30] kind of insight into his thought processes and and and mental health and so i thought that we would [35:37] just kind of look at some and and make some sense of it because he discussed issues including the war [35:44] with iran the artificial intelligence boom the federal reserve the supreme court and his um outlook [35:51] for the for the midterm so i'll start with just some areas that i've highlighted he was asked why should [35:58] americans believe that you respect the free press when you're restricting access to the white house [36:03] to some of your colleagues now of course this has been a huge story and what's most interesting about [36:08] it is despite the courts saying that trump did not have the right to prevent the the media from [36:14] accessing the white house he still refuses to allow cnn to come in his reply was because i do respect the [36:21] free press but i don't respect fake news i'll give you an example cnn and ms dnc which is ms now they [36:29] change the name because it does so poorly but i won the election i won it handily by massive numbers i won [36:36] the popular vote i won all seven swing states they said if you won three if you won three states i won all [36:43] seven i won the counties it's very important 86 popular vote everything and very conclusively i [36:51] haven't had a good story on cnn for years they're incapable of being they're fake news same thing on ms now [37:01] so i mean he doesn't really understand the purpose of the of the free press or does he he just refuses [37:08] to to be open to any criticism for his presidency well he is not at the developmental stage uh we've [37:20] discussed developmental stages and and his well the his interview is a treasure trove of uh information [37:28] for those who do psychoanalysis which looks at um one's uh stage of development and and he's not [37:36] at the stage where he can conceive of objective media or the law or um rights uh that apply to all [37:48] people in fact i said since very beginning that democracy will not be possible under this individual [37:55] because he cannot conceive of other people being equal to himself you might note that he only thinks [38:03] things are fair when everyone is absolutely effusive toward him sees him in the best possible light [38:12] um above and beyond anything he has done and in in a sense unconditionally so it is he went on to say [38:19] if i do the finest thing if i found the cure to cancer they would say why didn't he move quicker they [38:25] are just horrible people and they're so bad so i believe in a free press i believe in an honest press [38:32] but i don't believe in fake news and i know it's fake because i know the thing i don't mind you know [38:38] if i do something wrong i don't mind having a bad story he's written a couple of times about something [38:44] i said well listen he's not wrong but with the press if someone's going to call me if every single story [38:50] is look i've done a lot of good stuff i'm in the oval office i mean the public is very smart if i wasn't [38:57] doing a good job i wouldn't have won the election by a lot i mean this is the language of a third grader [39:05] well even less so he's he's not quite at the level of thinking in terms of a system of rules or laws [39:15] outside of himself he may speak the words free press but he doesn't understand what it means [39:21] he's constantly looking for the unconditional love and unconditional acceptance that is critical [39:28] at an early stage that he never got and so it almost doesn't matter if it's coming from him it has [39:37] to be completely perfect uh commendable and uh entirely praised in the uh maximal to the maximal extent [39:48] or else it will not be fair to him he he's i mean the the you know the free press conceptually is is [39:56] baked into america's laws you know the first amendment is is fundamental to to the united [40:04] states it's the first thing that people talk about and yet the president of the united states [40:12] is in total disagreement that that should exist i mean shouldn't that be a test for all future [40:18] presidents to to see not just whether they're cognitively uh able to to do the job but whether they [40:25] actually believe in in the the fundamental laws of america all the information we needed to do [40:47] a fitness evaluation the the top uh mental health experts from around the country uh determined that [40:54] he does not have the mental capacity to uh determine to make rational decisions and and that's why [41:02] democracy is very heavily tied to our collective state of mental health uh because a society in our [41:11] modern times the the developmental stage of a society uh is determined by level of democracy versus [41:20] level of autocracy autocracy is an is a regression and we can see from american society how it has gone [41:28] from espousing promoting and inspiring the entire world to uh espouse democracy and now we have regressed [41:41] to a point of not being able to value democracy but looking for a parental figure which is what [41:48] autocracy really is when we choose it and we may have many of the structures in place such as voting or [41:54] uh the press or uh the courts but lots of these are compromised as we have seen uh we have not uh and and by [42:07] many measures we're we're kind of uh uh a compromised democracy not a full one and so uh this is the [42:17] means by which autocracy is spreading nowadays through democratic structures and and uh co-opting [42:25] the structures to uh spread uh to undermine democracy in fact and so uh it all started in this country [42:36] uh as far as i am concerned the the acceleration came when we had an unfit a mentally unfit candidate [42:44] who was uh spreading um his his symptoms in the population that's what i have called trump contagion [42:54] that depends on the uh depends on exposure to the public the emotional bonds he develops not based [43:03] on rational persuasion or buying into his actual policies and ability to govern regarding the the [43:12] midterms in this time interview trump was asked do you plan to dispatch ice agents to polling places in [43:18] the midterms would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead up to the midterms [43:23] unless there's widespread violence in the streets trump's response was i don't rule anything out or [43:30] in we'll see you mean the insurrection act no i've never used it i could use it a lot of people think [43:36] i should use it sometimes we have the best look we have the lowest crime in the history of our country [43:42] we have the lowest murder rate since 1900 125 years we have the lowest murder rate that's despite the [43:49] fact that they allowed 25 million people and then the interviewer interrupts and says mr president your [43:56] polls have never been lower they're fake numbers i would beat anybody running today by 20 points [44:03] your numbers that you have are fake the pollsters are corrupt they're almost as corrupt as the writers [44:12] again this this kind of describes either him existing in a in a vacuum in a fantasy world or [44:20] that he he knows as you said earlier deep down that he is failing and that he is very much on the ropes [44:28] yes you can see that these are all defenses uh counter arguments to try to fight the feeling of uh [44:36] the knowledge of what reality actually is and his responses will always be fighting reality and in [44:46] his fight against reality he will become destructive toward reality so um i think by now people can see [44:55] what mental health experts have been trying to say since the very beginning of his candidacy and presidency [45:01] that this is a mental health issue above all if we attribute to him political ideas uh and see this as a [45:10] purely political issue then we're we're actually coddling and enabling his symptoms which are which is [45:18] neither good for him nor the population it's it's actually made his condition far worse by coddling him by [45:26] giving him what he desires through his um uh mental symptoms uh there's a difference between what [45:38] the disease desires and what one actually desires in one's rational mind that is why sometimes we even [45:45] force treatment on individuals because they are trapped in the disease and and if they did not return to [45:52] thank us uh which um is extremely impressive people we we forcibly hospitalized or forcibly treat with [46:00] medication later come back to thank us even though we treated them i mean we we went against everything [46:08] they claimed they desired at the time but that comes to show how oppressive uh mental pathology is [46:16] even for the person suffering it and we have to distinguish between the person [46:21] who is trapped in it and the disorder and and not treat the disorder as as rational belief there are [46:30] individuals that we know of who are in trump's direct orbit and natalie harp who initially started [46:37] off as kind of a joke character in this storyline the human printer she just prints stuff out and gives it [46:43] to trump with what you've just described it just proves that she is far more consequential [46:50] in the in the collapse of of american democracy because she is providing him i mean she is completely [46:58] committed to the cause she is totally in the cult of trump she is she is a product of a of an upbringing [47:06] in this kind of far-right christian nationalist environment and so she worships him and consequently [47:14] she he worships her so there is this kind of codependency that is going on yes she's often [47:23] uh dubbed uh dubbed the uh the substitute first lady but um uh well he's going to surround himself [47:34] with the number one criterion that they support his mental symptoms they support his delusions they [47:43] support his uh self-destructive ways and uh so so he's surrounded by people who are enabling his disease [47:55] and um this doesn't serve him either we have seen how this has only ballooned his expectations how his [48:04] grandiosity has transmogrified into delusions of grandeur with the presidency he probably sought the presidency to [48:11] try to counteract his feelings of inadequacy and um mental unfitness and this is why we have to have [48:21] external standards and people were not familiar with this when he first came on to the public scene because [48:30] people have not seen anyone so mentally impaired before but um i actually credit the public for uh for [48:41] immediately uh coming uh coming on board when we published our book it was an an instant new york times bestseller [48:49] the publisher couldn't print enough books for five weeks uh and we would have been number one [48:56] new york times bestseller if they had only had enough books uh that is what i feel that uh congress members [49:05] were responding to when they took when they were actually looking to us uh as a key to the removal of [49:13] donald trump from the presidency because they that's what they actually told us in the beginning when we [49:18] were the number one topic of national conversation uh they were referring to our ability to garner public [49:26] support because that's why public education and uh public pressure was you know that seems to be [49:35] everything that's why mental health that's the that's the thing that stops these um issues from [49:43] being resolved because it's such an unknown quantity and if it was something that could be diagnosed [49:49] the public didn't think so in the beginning uh i was invited to uh to all the major news networks and [49:56] in fact congress members themselves said to us said to me that even there being in a minority power [50:04] party did not matter uh that if they could get the public to uh to sign on to this to call for this [50:16] then uh then uh they could intervene and that's why they were looking to us because you know medical [50:24] issues are uh politically neutral uh and well why were we shut down immediately uh within two or three [50:33] weeks we went from being the number one topic of national conversation to being completely blacked [50:38] out of the media in two or three weeks and i don't believe we would have been shut down if we were not [50:45] going to be successful and if the public were not going to be successful in their demands they continued [50:52] to contact us you know where are the psychiatrists and where are the psychologists the public didn't uh [50:58] the public had to be indoctrinated over years to be convinced that mental health expertise has nothing [51:06] to do with mental health issues and that this was not a mental health issue you know it's gotten to the [51:11] point where everyone is um is sane washing and and nobody wishes to think of this as a mental health issue [51:20] but just imagine if we had not been blocked out of the public out of public discourse to which i entirely credit [51:28] the american psychiatric association and the presses they uh brought on board such as the new york times [51:35] editorial board and the atlantic at the time uh and and it was said that uh memo probably went around to [51:42] all the news organizations uh you know instilling the fear of of lawsuits in them when the goldwater rule [51:49] has nothing to do with uh in fact i wasn't even violating the goldwater rule if anyone looked at [51:55] uh the issue carefully but just imagine the tools the public would have had available if they continued [52:04] to treat a mental health issue as a mental health problem and and would it be better now though for [52:12] for the sorry to interrupt you would it be better for the no kings protest to be about his mental health [52:20] specifically and rather that would make all the difference right and rather than this concept of [52:26] we don't want a king we rejected kings previously and and you know this is this is a republic well [52:33] actually it should be about we don't we don't want a nutcase the two go hand in hand if you recall george [52:40] the third was was considered mentally ill and uh he had crazy ideas and and he had the same kind of [52:48] authoritarianism and and um ruling by fiat and and force um as as donald trump tends to and and it's uh [53:01] dealing with a mental health issue as a mental health problem only strengthens the public's ability [53:09] to support their own uh democratic power uh it's not that one replaces the other that's how [53:17] the public was falsely indoctrinated uh into thinking that if they accepted mental health experts [53:24] then that would be replacing the vote and they need to safeguard the vote well they never think bad of [53:30] legal experts who educate them about legal issues and there's plenty of them yeah yeah right um let's [53:37] let's go back to his his mental pathology in the in the construct that you've been warning people [53:46] about and that is this nuclear threat and how he is not to be trusted with america's arms because [53:56] the u.s has more nuclear weapons than any other nation and as you've described donald trump really is [54:02] the kind of the last man standing it is entirely down to down to him and we wouldn't trust him [54:09] to go and buy our groceries because he would think you would need to show id to get them [54:13] he was asked in the time interview he said uh the interviewer said last week you said you might [54:20] annihilate iran that was the word you use trump said yeah i would do that it's possible the interviewer [54:28] said you've made versions of that threat before you've also called yourself the president of peace [54:34] how can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people and trump's [54:39] response is because by annihilating iran we've created peace in the world with iran i don't think [54:46] you could ever have peace and then went on to make various claims about iran killing 75 000 people in [54:54] the last number of months and being very kind of non-specific and making up numbers um this is really [55:03] the greatest issue that we are facing and it's the one that you kind of made your pronouncements earlier [55:10] in the year to congress about that this how serious this is and how untrustworthy he is and the word [55:18] annihilation has so many connotations but to say it on the stage at the united nations an [55:24] organization that was created to bring peace to the world it is so destructive and and talks exactly [55:32] to the to the violent mentality of this individual that you describe i think that is the number one [55:40] concern that should be at the top of everyone's minds until he is removed from access to nuclear [55:48] weapons most people do not understand that a u.s president has entirely unfettered sole authority [55:55] to launch nuclear weapons and nobody can question him nobody can uh uh stop and say that he needs [56:05] to be mentally fit to be able to order them nobody can ask if it's militarily correct for him to order [56:12] them he is the only one who has the power to uh to basically destroy humanity and people also don't [56:23] fully understand that a nuclear war means essentially the end of the species that a nuclear winter will [56:34] descend in a way that will not allow food to grow uh billions of people will die uh quickly and um [56:46] as soviet leader nikita khrushchev whom i often quote the living will envy the dead there is no [56:55] chance of survival in a nuclear war or even you if you do survive it will be not a life will be a life [57:02] worse than death and to have someone have at his fingertips to wake up you know in the middle of the [57:13] night in a peak of rage the way he puts out social media posts he could launch nuclear weapons and we [57:21] have nothing we can do nothing about it he has a psychology to do it psychologically attracted to it [57:31] and he has we have the perfect conditions for him to do it uh with his popularity waning and with the [57:39] midterms just looking uh terrible for him and he knows that all his misdeeds and criminal um misconduct [57:51] will be exposed if we were to have even the house uh flipped to the democratic side and so um so for [58:01] medical reasons not political ones we put in our statement of medical concerns to congress um [58:12] we wrote it in february they entered it into the congressional record in on april 30th of this [58:18] year imagine if they had acted on our recommendations to lawfully immediately remove him uh from office [58:29] for medical reasons for urgent medical reasons um if they had done it as soon as we had the statement [58:37] we would not have had the iran war we would not have had the destruction of the global economy and [58:42] now the start of world war three global energy emergency as as well but he's just not gonna go [58:50] i mean even if they did vote to remove him he now is so far gone and he's so committed to building his [58:58] bunker and his arch and you know and he's done his helipad and all of these trappings for the you know to [59:08] to protect him when he hunkers down and refuses to ever leave the white house which can really be [59:14] the only obvious conclusion to this to this horror story that you would literally have to send in uh [59:21] the the the the the the marines to remove him physically and and and i just can't see it coming [59:29] to that well that is the correct mental health response that is the correct medical response [59:38] yes was asked in an interview uh would would i consider him institutionalizable well i considered [59:45] him um to be appropriate for an institution since the beginning of his first presidency because of the [59:52] dangers he posed yes but i i think now it would be hard to find a mental health professional who would [59:58] not agree that he meets all the standard criteria to be immediately institutionalized and the fact that [1:00:07] we are not doing it uh shows again the public not being educated in this area to think that this is just [1:00:17] a normal medical response to the situation it's not our response that is extreme it's a situation that [1:00:25] is extreme and the only appropriate response by medical standards and by psychiatric principles of [1:00:33] behavioral containment uh this is what we do we remove dangerous individuals from access to dangerous [1:00:41] weapons we contain them in an institutional setting uh in order to fully evaluate them and figure out [1:00:50] what the minimal um restraints are needed to uh safely allow the person either out of the institution or [1:01:01] keep them in the institution and uh this should go hand in hand with 25th amendment proceedings because [1:01:09] it it's not that it replaces one or the other um you don't stop someone you know presidents have had [1:01:17] colonoscopies surgeries all kinds of things you don't stop the procedure uh and say we have to do the 25th [1:01:25] amendment process you invoke the 25th amendment you know during or after the medical procedure is done [1:01:34] the medical procedure is meant to respond to the medical emergency you don't wait for you know you don't [1:01:42] uh refrain from treating a bleeding patient because he is president you treat them and and that is uh [1:01:54] the the true uh compromise of democracy has been deception of the people this goes back to the trump [1:02:04] the trump contagion that you wrote about originally is that everybody on on both sides of the aisle [1:02:13] has been programmed to think that this is normal and to think that this is well just part of america's [1:02:20] historical timeline and it will pass and and and life will go on and the pendulum will swing and a [1:02:27] democrat president will present themselves and and you know we'll look at it as a bad dream but [1:02:32] but the consequences of these actions not least his desire to annihilate another nation and we take [1:02:41] annihilation to mean a nuclear weapon we should remind people that the only country to have used a [1:02:46] nuclear weapon previously is the united states of america dropping bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki [1:02:54] and we know how that turned out and so there is precedent the more helpless he feels yeah the more [1:03:01] powerless he feels the more he goes there he has put out several social media posts of his sitting in [1:03:08] a spaceship away from the earth and pressing the nuclear button yeah that should chill us all yeah [1:03:16] finally i want to go back to the to the time interview um because the question that was asked [1:03:23] didn't really relate to the answer that he gave uh this was towards the end of the interview he was [1:03:28] asked have you seen the videos of mitch mcconnell back in the senate do you think he should resign [1:03:33] because of his health condition and trump's response was it was a disappointment to a lot of republicans [1:03:40] so that's just well sleepy joe gave pardons to everybody he gave them to fauci he gave them to [1:03:46] this but you mean i'm not allowed to give them but sleepy joe's allowed to give them this ain't going [1:03:52] to be much of a story here we are doing this you haven't asked me one effing positive question [1:03:59] all of this what about this what about that what about that what about this all negative why are you [1:04:04] devoting all this time to the white house you know how i do i do that out of my back pocket i pay for [1:04:10] a lot of it but i fix it because the white house should look like that it shouldn't look like if you [1:04:16] would have stood in that balcony and seen that wall half of the wall was falling it's actually dangerous [1:04:22] people are walking under crap was falling off all the time so that was in response to a question about [1:04:30] mitch mcconnell i mean these are the ramblings of a madman and yet he is allowed to continue [1:04:38] in the presidency is it the fact that he was asked a question specifically about about mcconnell's failing [1:04:45] health and the and that health kind of triggered him and he needed to divert or is it something else [1:04:53] he cannot tolerate uh thinking about ill health because he himself is in terrible health regardless [1:05:02] of what the white house employed physician says yes and um that is not something for the white house [1:05:11] physician to determine it is for independent health professionals especially mental health experts in [1:05:18] this case to determine whether or not he appears fit whether or not he needs an evaluation whether or [1:05:27] not he needs to be hospitalized to be evaluated and this is not something that the people should just [1:05:35] uh tolerate uh people should demand answers people should demand safety they do not deserve to have a [1:05:44] leader who poses a danger against them an existential danger to the extinction of the human species [1:05:54] they deserve to have a leader who is who they select and and not be deceived into selecting and and [1:06:04] because they are too intelligent to be deceived by near propaganda they installed someone with true delusions who [1:06:13] uh has the emotional compulsion behind these beliefs that would infect and hijack people's minds uh in in [1:06:25] in the form of uh a mental health pandemic you know carl jung swiss psychiatrist carl jung has said that uh [1:06:34] human beings the greatest threat to human beings is not microbes not wars but the human mind itself [1:06:43] because it has this ability to spread unconsciously uh beliefs that that we can you know uh be uh enthusiastically [1:06:56] espouse and yet it is driven by emotional compulsion and disease uh mental disease uh that we [1:07:07] would only figure out after we've been awoken from it but still the good news is the healthier segment [1:07:14] of the population of the population is greater than than the mentally compromised one unfortunately there [1:07:20] were enough uh you know uh trump supporters who are waking up and i feel that this is an opportunity [1:07:29] this is the opportunity even to reach out to them people constantly ask me what can we do what can we do [1:07:35] and uh one thing we can do is just talk just um just speak about what we see what we feel is needed [1:07:45] that this is indeed a mental health problem in spite of what we've been told for almost a decade [1:07:51] uh in spite of how we were deceived and disempowered uh we're going to recognize it for what it is [1:07:58] and and just extend uh a hand of understanding um to those former trump supporters that that you [1:08:08] understand how they've been deceived they were taken in as well it was not their fault most important [1:08:14] that's right that's right so i wanted to uh just say in terms of people who are looking for [1:08:20] what they could do i'm doing a project for human survival because of the uh dangers of our time [1:08:28] and we will be greatly discussing what we can do to curtail the dangers and how to prevent the dangers [1:08:35] uh during this election election season and beyond so that will be held every wednesday [1:08:41] uh announced through my substack bandyxlee.substack.com it's just an announcement for the [1:08:49] uh the same topics that we're discussing here well thank you so much i i appreciate the work that you [1:08:56] you do um i just wanted to read you the final line of that time interview only because i thought it [1:09:01] was kind of amusing trump said well i hope i get a decent story i don't think you know it's hard to get [1:09:08] a good story every question's a hit i don't know what the hell's wrong well the uh the the same [1:09:16] sentiment is felt from us too um we'll do this again next week but for now dr bandy lee thank you [1:09:24] for joining the weekend show thank you very much i'm anthony davis don't forget to support me and [1:09:30] independent journalism on substack at the anthony davis and i'll come back next sunday with dr bandy lee [1:09:37] and more factual news to discuss on the five-minute news weekend show with midas touch [1:09:56] you