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    Trump's 'narcissistic rage' led him to assassinate Suleimani -- now he could be taking the country to war: Yale psychiatrist

    Bandy X. Lee, DC Report @Raw Story
    January 06, 2020

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    President Donald Trump faces a barrage of new investigations from the Democrat-led House of Representatives. (AFP / Brendan Smialowski)

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Bandy X. Lee, DC Report @Raw Story

    “You nailed him!” is the typical response I received on Twitter, the forum I have been using to reach out to the public, after the assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassim Suleimani.  My audience was referring to the concerns I had regarding Donald Trump leading up to the act of aggression, which is precisely the psychological danger I warned against, along with more than 800 other mental health professionals who joined me in petitioning Congress to consult with us about this danger.


    Militarily and legally, no accusation of the president can or should be made without definitive proof.  Psychologically, however, one is capable of generating a “formulation” of a person, testing it against data, as in a scientific experiment, and confirming it before events happen.  When it is strengthened over time through continual information and repeatedly tested against real events, it sharpens to great precision, and one can begin anticipating behavior.  Before there is a “wag the dog” maneuver to distract or to rally support, there is the thought.  It feels uncanny, indeed, to have such a grasp on someone so as to be able to predict just the kind of military move he would make within approximately 12 hours of his making it—so much so that, when DC Report asked me to do an analysis of Rudy Giuliani 24 hours earlier, I complained: “But … Donald Trump is about to erupt in Iran!”

    The afflicted person, outraged at the deprivation of the adulation to which one feels entitled, becomes blind to other concerns such as the safety of others or the self.

    From the forums at the World Mental Health Coalition, I know that many other professionals feel they equally have their fingers on the president’s psychological pulse.  With our own patients, when someone represents a safety risk, we have our antennae up to be sure that we feel confident about leaving them in the community.  While the president is certainly not our patient, it is like having someone who is an extremely high safety risk out in the community: we had better understand him well.  And well we do.

    A Threat to the Nation

    Indeed, almost all colleagues to whom I have spoken about this tell me that they know the president better than any patient they have had in their entire careers.  It exposes the fallacy that has been promoted during this presidency that we should not be able to tell anything at all without a personal examination.  I know this to be untrue not only from the scientific literature but because of my own grandfather, to me akin to Dr. Bernard Rieux in The Plague when he did not leave the devastated areas of Seoul after the Korean War, as he became famous for turning down every high office and deanship at medical schools in order to treat patients day and night.  After decades of working 20-hour days almost non-stop, he was accurately diagnosing strangers upon their merely passing into the doorway of his office; later tests were said to be superfluous.  If this were possible for an internist, for whom the examinable parts are hidden, it is conceivable that it is possible with some aspects for a psychiatrist, especially since the parts we examine are fully exposed.  What is important is that we rigorously confirm what we know and do not know and be responsible for what we say.

    And when we see something unequivocally critical, we should say something.  So what is happening with the president?  It is what my esteemed colleague and former director of a division at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. John Zinner, has warned about: “narcissistic rage.”  He joined me in leading the petition to Congress for, he believed, like I, that while impeachment was important, Donald Trump had the real potential to become ever more dangerous as his condition progressed, as a threat to the safety of our nation.  Short of his sole command over nuclear weapons, there were “many other dangers he can pose by the use, fueled by rage, of his assumed absolute executive authority, and by the loyalists who serve him.”

    Unable to Take Responsibility

    As one of the nation’s top researchers of narcissistic disorders, Zinner assessed that Donald Trump’s sense of worth is “entirely dependent on admiration from others….  To cope with the resultant hollow and empty feelings [from criticism] he reacts with what is referred to as narcissistic rage.”  Unable to take responsibility for any error, mistake, or failing, he would not only attack the perceived source of his humiliation but deflect the blame onto others.  We see this happen repeatedly through history when such disordered individuals take power: not only does an already inflated self-image morph into grotesque delusions of grandeur, but any threat to those delusions of the self can and have been met with cruel retaliation, institutional ruin, scapegoating, devastating wars, and genocide.

    Anyone who has seen attacks of narcissistic rage knows it can be brutal and destructive.  The afflicted person, outraged at the deprivation of the adulation to which one feels entitled, becomes blind to other concerns such as the safety of others or the self.  As one’s grandiose image, which the adoration was necessary to buttress, collapses, one is no longer capable of repressing the painful feelings of inferiority and inadequacy that resurface.  This experience is more menacing than any existential threat could be.  Access to weapons or war-making power in such a state is extremely dangerous, for they become highly attractive as a means for “restoration.”  Mistakes of the past, such as aggression in the Middle East, are likely to repeat in more serious form rather than be avoided.

    Impeachment is the ultimate rebuke of a president.  As a quick Senate acquittal appeared less likely with the House’s delay in delivering the articles of impeachment, Donald Trump’s promotion of QAnon conspiracy theories and his description of himself as “heaven sent” the week before are indicators of his growing narcissistic rage.  A collaborator and former CIA profiler, Dr. Jerrold Post, had expressed his concerns through a paraphrase of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “He will not go gentle into that good night, but will rage, rage at the passing of the light….  And what that rage will do to international relations is really too scary to contemplate.”

    Dr. Bandy X. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.  Her maternal grandfather, a renowned internist, was Dr. Geun-Young Lee.

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    Capitol rioters' defense that Trump ordered them to storm Congress is flopping in the courts: report

    Matthew Chapman
    February 27, 2021

    As participants in the deadly January 6th Capitol riot face charges for their actions, many have tried to argue that they reasonably believed former President Donald Trump had given his imprimatur to their actions.

    But according to the Associated Press, this defense is not being well-received in court.

    "Facing damning evidence in the deadly Capitol siege last month — including social media posts flaunting their actions — rioters are arguing in court they were following then-President Donald Trump's instructions on Jan. 6," reported Michael Kunzelman and Alanna Richer. "But the legal strategy has already been shot down by at least one judge and experts believe the argument is not likely to get anyone off the hook for the insurrection where five people died, including a police officer."

    U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell swatted aside this argument from a member of the "Proud Boys" in Kansas City, saying, "This purported defense, if recognized, would undermine the rule of law because then, just like a king or a dictator, the president could dictate what's illegal and what isn't in this country. And that is not how we operate here."

    Some of the Capitol rioters have expressed remorse and regret for trusting Trump's conspiracy theories about the election being stolen. One rioter known as the "QAnon Shaman" even volunteered to give testimony at the former president's impeachment trial.

    Trump is furious with Kevin McCarthy again and may attack him in CPAC speech: report

    Tom Boggioni
    February 27, 2021

    According to a report from Politico's Playbook, Donald Trump may launch an attack on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Sunday because he doesn't feel the top GOP official in the House has done enough to rein in Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY).

    Several days ago McCarthy and Cheney had a public disagreement over the former president's future political prospects, with the Wyoming lawmaker telling reporters, "I've been clear about my views on President Trump and the extent to which, following Jan. 6, I don't believe he should be playing a role in the party or the country."

    That apparently set Trump off according to three sources speaking with Politico.

    According to the report, "Three people close to Trump tell me that he's stewing anew over Kevin McCarthy," wrote Politico's Tara Palmeri. "It's become so frequent that his advisers think the House minority leader may be in for a public reprimand. That's even after the powwow at Mar-a-Lago where McCarthy tried to patch things up after he denounced Trump for the violence on Jan. 6."

    "The reason for Trump's displeasure: an emboldened Cheney," she continued. "Each time Cheney criticizes Trump from her leadership post as the No. 3 House Republican, he's reminded that it was McCarthy who pleaded with his conference to keep her on as chair — despite her vote to impeach Trump. The latest trigger came Wednesday, when Cheney said at a press conference that Trump should not lead the party going forward while McCarthy awkwardly stood by."

    According to the report, Trump may have words for McCarthy in his speech on Sunday. The top Republican in the House is scheduled to speak at CPAC Saturday afternoon.

    You can read more here.

    Trump tried to 'run out the clock' on handing over his taxes -- here is why it will likely fail

    Tom Boggioni
    February 27, 2021

    In a column for NBC News, Carol Lam, the former U.S. Attorney for Southern California, wrote that -- due to legal maneuverings by Donald Trump's lawyers -- prosecutors in Manhattan looking into his tax returns normally would find themselves under the gun to file criminal charges but they received a helping hand from lawmakers in the state.

    Lam noted that Trump's attorneys did a good job repeatedly appealing to the Supreme Court to halt the release of what has been described as "millions of documents" related to his personal finances and his Trump Organization, and that has put prosecutors under the gun due to statue of limitations laws.

    "First, almost all federal and state criminal law violations have a deadline known as a statute of limitations, beyond which a suspect cannot be charged with a crime. Statutes of limitations vary widely among states and the federal system. Some serious crimes may have statutes of limitations as long as 10 or 20 years," she wrote before adding the rules governing prosecuting a sitting president -- whether right or wrong -- worked in Trump's favor.

    Writing, "A president who serves a four-year term would be absolved of many criminal acts; a president who serves two four-year terms would escape criminal liability for almost any crime committed before or during his first presidential term," she added that Trump may still not benefit in the way he had hoped.

    "The state of New York has taken common sense action to remedy this problem with respect to potential state prosecutions of former presidents. On Feb. 10, the New York state Legislature passed the "New York No Citizen is Above the Law Act," sponsored by the Senate's Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris. The new law provides that if a former president is charged with a New York state crime, the amount of time he was president is excluded from the calculation of the statute of limitations," she wrote before issuing a warning.

    "Whether this law can apply to criminal conduct that predated the law's passage remains to be seen, but there is a sound argument that it can be applied if the statute of limitations had not yet expired when the act was passed," she suggested.

    You can read more here.

     
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