The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

by Bandy X. Lee

  The American Association of University Professors’ national council has approved the following resolution (2016): “Since the election of Donald J. Trump almost two weeks ago, the US has experienced an unprecedented spike in hate crimes, both physical and verbal, many of them on college and university campuses.… These have been directed against African Americans, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community, religious minorities, women, and people with disabilities. In some instances, the perpetrators have invoked the president-elect in support of their heinous actions.” Within the resolution, the council affirms the concept of free speech, stating, “No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed. But threats and harassment differ from expressions of ideas that some or even most may find repulsive. They intimidate and silence.”

  Two social psychologists at the University of Kansas conducted a study on prejudice that involved surveying an even split of four hundred Trump and Clinton supporters. The scientists noted that “Trump’s campaign over the preceding 18 months featured a procession of racist and ethnocentric rhetoric, with repeated insults, gross generalizations, and other derogatory speech hurled at Mexicans, Muslims, and women.” So they asked one hundred of the Trump and one hundred of the Clinton supporters to rate their personal feelings toward a variety of social groups that the Trump campaign had disparaged at one time or another over the course of the race: Muslims, immigrants, Mexicans, fat people, and people with disabilities. All study participants were also polled on groups that Trump had not publicly maligned: alcoholics, adult film stars, rich people, members of the National Rifle Association, and Canadians. When the participants were surveyed again after the election, Crandall and White found that “Both personal and general prejudices remained unchanged for both sets of supporters with regard to the groups that Trump had not publicly targeted. But for the groups that Trump had disparaged, both Trump and Clinton supporters reported slightly lower levels of personal animus, and significantly higher levels of perceived acceptance for discriminatory speech.… In short: The perceived norm had shifted.” Research suggests that individual expressions of prejudice and potential violence depend highly on perceived social norms; Trump surely had the effect of changing those norms (Crandall and White 2016).

  Sometimes overlooked is the extent to which this president’s mental health issues are harming our children. His impact is pervasive enough to have earned a label: “the Trump Effect.” It has been used specifically to describe the trauma American children are experiencing because of Trump’s candidacy and now presidency. “We have a bully in our midst, some therapists and school counselors say, traumatizing the most vulnerable of us. That bully is the 2016 presidential campaign, including the so-called ‘Trump Effect.’” SPLC Teaching Tolerance director Maureen Costello has said, “I’m concerned children are coming to school every day terrified, anxious, disappointed, fearful. Feeling unwanted” (LaMotte 2016).

  As the issue of Trump’s mental illness was not of intense national concern until he ran for office and assumed the presidency, assessment by individuals with intimate understanding of what that job entails are useful for analyzing his dangerousness. It is instructive to remove the variable of political ideology from our determination and narrow our review to the perspective of Republicans only. In August 2016, a letter signed by fifty such individuals was published in the New York Times. While some of their concern centers on lack of experience, a portion of the letter made more direct reference to Trump’s mental and emotional stability: “The undersigned individuals have all served in senior national security and/or foreign policy positions in Republican Administrations, from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. We have worked directly on national security issues with these Republican Presidents and/or their principal advisers during wartime and other periods of crisis, through successes and failures. We know the personal qualities required of a President of the United States. None of us will vote for Donald Trump. From a foreign policy perspective, Donald Trump is not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.” A president, they continue, “… must be willing to listen to his advisers and department heads; must encourage consideration of conflicting views; and must acknowledge errors and learn from them … must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation … must maintain cordial relationships with leaders of countries of different backgrounds and must have their respect and trust,” and must be able and willing “to separate truth from falsehood” in order to aspire to be president and commander in chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. They conclude: “We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history.”

  Hillary Clinton’s remark “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons” was not just campaign hyperbole (Broad and Sanger 2016). The president of the United States has approximately 2,000 deployed nuclear warheads at his or her disposal and has the authority to order these weapons to be launched even if our country has not yet been attacked. Weapons fired against the United States from a submarine would take about twelve minutes to hit Washington, DC. Missiles fired from most continents would reach this country in around thirty minutes. The nightmare scenario of this unstable, impulsive, blame-shifting, and revenge-obsessed individual having mere minutes to make the kind of decision required in such a scenario is of the gravest concern possible in our era.

  In an interview on Fox News, then–Vice President Dick Cheney stated, “He [the president] could launch a kind of devastating attack the world’s never seen. He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in” (Rosenbaum 2011). The entire focus in the missile launch decision process is on whether the launch command is authentic, not whether it is reasonable. Ron Rosenbaum describes the case of Maj. Harold Hering, who, during the period when Nixon was displaying erratic behavior, was troubled by a question he was not allowed to ask. “Maj. Hering decided to ask his question anyway, regardless of consequences: How could he know that an order to launch his missiles was ‘lawful’? That it came from a sane president, one who wasn’t ‘imbalance[d]’ or ‘berserk?’ as Maj. Hering’s lawyer eventually, colorfully put it.” Hering was a career military officer and asked the question while attending a missile training class. He was discharged from the air force for asking it. To this day, Harold Hering’s question remains unanswered.

  If we who have come together to write this book are accurate in our assessments, one must ask why Donald J. Trump’s dangerousness was not addressed earlier in his life? The extensive public record on him shows that he has been insulated by inherited wealth and that his father had similar mental health disturbances. As we are all witnessing now, with his politically inexperienced daughter and son-in-law taking key advisory positions at the White House, Trump has distanced himself from possible checks and balances while enabling his own disorder: a lack of insight and confirmation-seeking that make certain mental disorders particularly dangerous in a position of power.

  A substantive change in the level of his dangerousness came with his assumption of the role of leader of the free world. Although an argument can be made that, by taking this office, he has shaken the global political structure to the extent that the U.S. presidency is rapidly losing that standing. His narcissistic traits (manifesting in blatant lying, impulsive and compulsive decision making against rational interests, and immature relational abilities) are creating a leadership gap that other political actors may well seek to fill. Yet, it is impossible for him, through the lens of his mental dysfunction, to evaluate his actual presentation and impact.

  As the ultimate representative of our nation, Donald J. Trump is normalizing previously outrageous behaviors, negatively
impacting everyone from leaders of other nations to our own children. From the outset of his presidency, although clearly absent a mandate from the population he now governs, he has repeatedly declared himself “the greatest,” or “tremendous,” or “knowing more than anyone,” and other statements consistent with narcissistic personality disorder, with regard to an “expectation of being viewed as superior without commensurate achievements” (American Psychiatric Association 2013, p. 669). He exhibits extreme denial of any feedback that does not affirm his self-image and psychopathic tendencies, which affords him very limited ability to learn and effectively adjust to the requirements of the office of president. Rather, he consistently displays a revenge-oriented response to any such feedback. Holding this office at once feeds his grandiosity and claws at the fragile sense of self underneath it. His patterns of behavior while in the role of president of the United States have potentially dire impact on every individual living not only in this nation but across the entire globe. The earth itself is in peril, both from the urgent issues that are not being addressed while an unstable man sits in the Oval Office and by the new urgencies he creates. Mr. Trump is and has demonstrated himself to be a danger to others—not just one person or a few, but possibly to all others.

  Diane Jhueck, L.M.H.C., D.M.H.P., has operated a private therapy practice for several decades. In addition, she performs mental health evaluations and detentions on individuals presenting as a danger to self or others. In a previous social justice career, she was a women’s specialist at the United Nations, in New York City. She founded the Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant, an empowerment project that has been in operation for thirty years. She also founded the People’s AIDS Project and was an assistant regional manager for Feeding America. She has directed agencies addressing food aid, domestic violence, apartheid, low-income housing, and LGBTQ rights.

  Acknowledgments

  I thank Bandy Lee, M.D., for her exceptional assistance in the preparation of this chapter.

  References

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  HEALTH, RISK, AND THE DUTY TO PROTECT THE COMMUNITY

  HOWARD H. COVITZ, PH.D., A.B.P.P.

  Don’t go loose-lipped among your people (but)

  Don’t stand idly by either as your neighbor bleeds;

  I am God.

  Leviticus 19:161

  This collected volume of essays is about the investigation of a tension between two goods, a balancing act that is at least as old as the Bible. Leviticus (see epigraph) argues for a version of confidentiality that is almost unlimited: “Don’t go loose-lipped among your people.” Indeed, the psalmist would specify further:

  Who is the man who desires life.…

  Guard your tongue against speaking ill and

  your lips against uttering gossip. (Psalms 34:12)

  Looking back to the Leviticus text, we see that an exception is immediately rendered, as there would be times when speaking up was necessary to protect another from harm. In traditional cantillation, the halfway melody mark of the sentence (esnachtah) is immediately before “I am God.” The intent of the ancient writer seems to be: Oh, yes, there is a tension between Confidentiality and the Duty to Warn and recognizing this tension holds the essence of Godliness … or Goodness, as we might say today. And after two to three millennia, the mental health community is just beginning to recognize this dialectic. This, indeed, is the dialogue that developed within the community of practitioners during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This tension is known as the one between the Goldwater rule, which protects a limited privacy for public figures, and the duty to warn those who may be at risk of serious harm from the very same public figures.