A Confederacy of Psychopaths: Trump and His Enablers
The MAGA cult represents a profound public mental health crisis. Since 2017, Dr. Bandy Lee has raised the alarm about the pervasive influence of Donald Trump's psychopathy on his followers, coining the term "Trump contagion," and it may have affected people in your own circle.
In her urgent book, The Psychology of Trump Contagion, Dr. Lee argues that the mental health implications of Trump's MAGA movement are significantly underestimated. With her extensive background in public sectors such as prisons and state hospitals, she has observed how toxic influences can spread. Rather than lifting those around them, healthy individuals risk adopting the pathologies of those with severe impairments—a dynamic she has witnessed in environments like street gangs or dysfunctional families, reminiscent of the Trump family itself.
Trump's manipulative tactics leave many feeling trapped and powerless, distorting reality to maintain his grip on power. At the heart of Trump's pathology are his pronounced narcissism, violent tendencies, and deep-seated feelings of inadequacy—all exacerbated among his followers by societal stressors like the income inequality crisis.
In Part 1 of our conversation, we delve into the dark psychology behind Trump and his enablers, including the lack of urgency by Nancy Pelosi during the first two impeachments, as this show warned, as well as the roles played by media executives, and corporate greed.
This week’s bonus show, out Saturday, for our Truth-Teller ($5/month) members and higher will address pressing questions about Jill Stein in our listener Q&A, produced by our Democracy Defender ($10/month) members. We’ll also continue our discussion with Dr. Lee on how to navigate relationships with MAGA cultists, whether Trump staged his assassination attempt, and the troubling connections to pedophile rings within the corrupt family court system. Thank you to everyone who supports the show–we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!
Show Notes:
Join our final phonebank with Sister District this Wednesday at 6pm ET! https://www.mobilize.us/sisterdistrictnyc/event/642096/
Near Fort Myers, Florida? Join Andrea for a day of action! https://www.mobilize.us/leecountydec/event/680718/
Are you in London? Andrea will be speaking at the Ukrainian Institute of London on Friday November 15th. Details here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ukrainianinstitutelondon/1450274
The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew https://www.amazon.com/More-Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump/dp/B0DJ4JZD2B
The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Humankind https://www.amazon.in/Psychology-Trump-Contagion-Existential-Democracy-ebook/dp/B0CW1DWBZ9
Discover more of Dr. Bandy Lee’s work at her personal site: https://bandylee.com/
This week’s opening song was “Change Happens (One Conversation at a Time) by Ellen Schwartz and Roger Bruno of the Band Too Human. Check out their work here: http://toohumanonline.com and Submit your own music here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-d_DWNnDQFYUMXueYcX5ZVsA5t2RN09N8PYUQQ8koq0/edit?ts=5fee07f6&gxids=7628.
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Andrea Chalupa (00:21):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. The film that the psychopaths in the Kremlin don't want you to see. So be sure to watch it this week. We have a very special guest, Dr. Bandy Lee, who was early warning everyone about the current crisis America, and therefore the world finds itself in where Donald Trump might become president again and it's game over for democracy in America. And even if Kamala Harris hopefully wins, we are still left with the violent cult of Nazi maga. We're still living with that violence and we need to understand it and know what to do about it. And that's what this discussion is about. And we're going to run part two this coming weekend. And Bandi Lee, she's wonderful.
(01:24):
We're going to have her again on the show. She's an American psychiatrist and the author of several books and other resources, which we'll link to in this show notes. She's most recently the author of The Psychology of Trump Contagion, an Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Human Kind. And if you are anxious about the election and all of this, then join me at the Gaslit Nation Phone Bank this Wednesday, 6:00 PM Eastern. We're making calls with Sister District into crucial battleground states. Sign up in the show notes and this weekend to our listeners who are anywhere near Fort Myers, Florida, I will be there Saturday and Sunday helping Gaslit Nation listeners, including one who's running for office at a local race, get out the vote. All of these key local state races are building resistance to Victor Orbin of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and that drives up ballot races like Kamala Harris, the federal races.
(02:29):
So Florida is very much in play and we're going to get as close as we possibly can and build greater resistance for the future because it's not just about winning the White House, but leaving no one behind. We're not going to leave our Republican hostage state listeners behind. You are safe with us, we're fighting for you. And if you are in London or anywhere near London, I will be there on November 15th at the Ukrainian Institute of London. I'll link to that in the show notes. I'll be there in the evening talking about my new graphic novel, which is the graphic novel adaptation of my film, Mr. Jones, in the shadow of Stalin. We had this event in New York City and now we're coming to London and I'm so excited to see you guys and if anyone wants to let me live with you, if Trump should win, I'm totally open to that.
(03:20):
Alright, and don't forget Gaslit Nation listeners. We have our political salons over Zoom every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern. We're going strong through inauguration day, carrying each other across the finish line. And if you want to join that, if you want to get our episodes ad free, bonus shows and so much more, make sure you join our community listeners subscribe@patreon.com slash that's patreon.com/gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show and remember part two of this important discussion with Dr. Bandy Lee is running this coming weekend. And now without further ado, Dr. Bandi Lee on what we are up against when it comes to the MAGA cult. And part two is going to be looking at what do you do if you have a MAGA cultist in your life, including one harassing you out in public. So look out for that coming on Saturday. What is the psychology behind the MAGA movement?
Dr. Bandy Lee (04:22):
First of all, thank you for having me. I've been greatly looking forward to this interview. I have described the MAGA movement actually as public mental health problem and warned against it since 2017. I've always stated that the problem of Donald Trump is not just the mental impairments that he has individually, but also the kinds of influence he will have on his followers because of his position of power and over time as a result of his exposure to the public. And so of course, over the past nine years that he has been in the public eye and greatly exposed symptoms that I warned that would spread among his followers has indeed come to pass. And I described that in my recent book, the Psychology of Trump Contagion, an existential Danger to American Democracy in all humankind. And I wrote that because the psychological effects of his exposure to the public was greatly under evaluated both by mental health experts and non-mental health experts.
(05:29):
I think I have been particularly attuned to that aspect of things because of my work in the public sector. I've worked in prisons, jails, state hospital settings where individuals go untreated for long periods of time. And so you see a great of that psychosocial effects of exposure of those severe symptoms. What we see is that the healthy individuals who are exposed to him or exposed to the dominant individual with severe symptoms don't make the severely impaired person better, but rather the other way around that the symptoms spread among followers. I've seen that in street gangs, Kristen blocks and families where the dominant individual has a psychotic disorder, for example. The entire family looks psychotic for the end. And so there's a clear solution to that, which is to take a careful history, figure out who the primary individual is, and then hospitalize the person or separate the person through incarceration, separation of cell blocks, and the followers actually return quite dramatically to their original state. So that's a phenomenon I've tried to explain in my recent book.
Andrea Chalupa (06:38):
I've been podcasting for six years and I've never seen a tech issue, like the one that just happened. It was like somebody else was controlling my computer and suddenly all these windows were popping up and it was very odd and that was really weird because it was like somebody else was manipulating my computer and I got kicked off of my normal microphone. So I'm going to try to go back to my normal microphone and see if they'll let me do it. Please keep in mind, I've had this setup for years that I've never had an issue like the one we're now experiencing, so give me one second, but somehow I got kicked off and it was very creepy what happened. I've never seen that. Not since the days of 2016, 2017, 2018 when the Kremlin was harassing my sister and weird stuff would happen anyway.
Dr. Bandy Lee (07:20):
And of course I'm targeted, so
Andrea Chalupa (07:23):
Yes, so fun times everyone. Okay, so I love that explanation. I feel like Trump is subjecting us to what he's put his own family through. It feels like America is being held hostage by the sociopath who we cannot escape in our dreams, and he likes it that way. What is it that Trump suffers from in your expert opinion?
Dr. Bandy Lee (07:45):
I think that's a good description of what it is like to be a victim of his severe symptoms and the spread of his pathology that we feel helpless and trapped and he depends on this to spread his influence and keep people under his control and to use people as his instruments, the instruments to his own ends, be it his personality cult or his ability to control reality or his own feeling of self-worth because he doesn't believe he can get it on his own and certainly as a result he would not get it through meritorious actions or through honest deeds. What is his pathology? Well, as you may know, psychiatrists are prohibited from diagnosing without personal examining and getting consent from the individual. Although that's been an obsolete guidelines since 1980 because we no longer diagnose based on introspective interviews alone. We do so more commonly based on objective observation of behavior and certainly where functional assessments are concerned, consent does not apply.
(09:01):
We're not taking him on as a patient. So that was kind of a gaslighting of the public in order to remove mental health experts from public discourse. So I'll just mention that because it was such a huge intervention that placed us on a course of peril more than any other factor done by the American Psychiatric Association. It was really a fascist move that facilitated the advance of fascism like no other factor in this era because fascism, as I've described it is not a political ideology, but mental pathology and politics. It of course starts with the mental pathology and the leader, the leader's inability to perform their function and they were drawn to high positions in the first place to try to counteract their intolerable feelings of inadequacy in capacity worthlessness. So their solution is if they get these high positions that respect and deference will be automatic and they'll be all powerful, and that's why they seek these positions, not because they are fit or even desirous of wanting to fulfill that function.
(10:08):
So those are some of the underlying pathologies that he has. People have mentioned all kinds of diagnoses, but really the truly dangerous signs that he was showing were his violence proneness, his dangerous personality disposition, his need to fulfill his narcissistic needs, pathological levels of narcissistic needs through this kind of symbiosis with others who share his developmental wounds, who are suffering from stress, from societal stress. I've been writing about this for quite some time, that the structural violence of society would lead to mass violence, behavioral violence by structural violence, I mean the escalating most urgent was the escalating economic inequalities throughout the US primarily, but also throughout the world, the global disparities that were giving rise to dispositions toward behavioral violence and ultimate a violent president in the US Many have asked why do I use the words dangerous or violent for someone who as I did early on in his presidency?
(11:17):
Well, he was already showing the signs of verbal aggression boasting about his sexual assaults. He was inciting his followers to violence, praising violent dictators, showing an attraction to violent weapons and war. So he was violent president to start who instituted violent and dangerous policies that had killed the vast majority of 1.2 million American deaths could be attributed to his COVID-19 mismanagement. He has destabilized the geopolitical stability in ways that have given rise or attributed to many of the conflicts we see today that have happened even in the Biden administration. Of course, the Biden administration has certainly endorsed many of these militaristic approaches, but we cannot underestimate Donald Trump's contribution to the well, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the emboldening of Vladimir Putin to assault Ukraine in unprecedented ways, just unprecedented response by Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza and to the October 7th attacks. I mean, just the psychological predisposition of this kind of bellicosity and outright destruction, near genocide.
(12:39):
I would even go as far as to call it genocide of peoples in ways that are happening right now happen laid out, laid down during the Trump era, during the Trump presidency, and also the acceptance of violence as a valid political method. The political violence that we see in the US today was not seen in any era before Donald Trump. And so he is certainly a product of a lot of the predispositions of our culture, but he certainly since his presidency has vastly accelerated the proneness to violence, also to criminality and violations of the rule of law and other institutions. So those are the kinds of mental impairments that I was most concerned about. And dangerousness by the way, is a mental health assessment that mental health experts often do. It's a functional assessment, so we're not doing it on the person as a patient, but rather we're doing it for society or potential victims or whoever requests the evaluation. We're often asked to do dangerousness risk assessments by the courts or the government or by employers. This is the kind of assessment that does not require diagnosis, does not require personal interview and certainly does not require consent. And we did this as a service to the public psychiatrists and other mental health experts. We have a responsibility not just to patients but to society as well, almost to equal measure according to the preamble of our ethics.
Andrea Chalupa (14:11):
Thank you so much for bringing up the Trump body count. How many people are dead today because of Trump? And that's a threat that's ongoing, especially with all of the national security documents that he stole that were floating around Mar-a-Lago, which has become a viper den of spies of our foreign adversaries. I actually have a question here for you, which you've already got into, but just to underline the point you made with the pandemic, as you mentioned, there's over a million deaths that could be attributed to Trump where he weaponized withholding aid to states led by his political opponents. He minimized the threat of the pandemic. His own supporters were dying of this virus because they thought it was a hoax. People who are of Asian descent were killed because Trump kept calling the pandemic the Chinese virus. Trump weakened America's position in Afghanistan including releasing 5,000 Taliban fighters, essentially forcing the hand of the Biden administration to pull out of Afghanistan.
(15:13):
Something you as well referenced. Putin launched his total war of annihilation of Ukraine, something he would not have done had Hillary Clinton been president, but Trump had weakened US national security to the point where Putin seized the opportunity. Trump orchestrated a violent co attempt, which led to several people dying, including by suicide. And Trump has told his ally Netanyahu to stop ceasefire talks with the US prolonging a disastrous now regional war. And of course, Trump emboldened Putin to the point where Russia and its proxies have expanded their aggression across Africa and the Middle East, including in Syria. Again, it would be difficult to attribute a total body count to Donald Trump, but the number is massive of deaths caused by this man, deaths and destruction and how many are vulnerable today? Oh, and of course there were the several mass shootings in the US and abroad inspired by Maga MAGA loyalists, their doctrine of fascism and white supremacy. Given the incalculable harm Trump has caused and continues to cause, why do you think our institutions aren't doing more to stop him, especially when it's in their own best interest?
Dr. Bandy Lee (16:29):
I would agree with every single thing you've said, and I would also add dangerous policies such as no other president had overturned or had more destructive policy toward the environment and overturned protections of the environment contributing to massive advances toward climate change. Of course, he pulled out of the Paris agreement as well as contributed to the nuclear arms race as well as the acceptance of nuclear war as something that is thinkable. And he, of course pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal massively increased possibility of usage of nuclear weapons. So yes, I'm glad you mentioned all that you have.
Andrea Chalupa (17:13):
And the abortion ban, the several women that have died from the abortion ban, the Trump tax cuts that were paid for by the working class, which further drives people in a greater poverty and poverty is a killer. It certainly shortens life expectancy and deregulation and so on. But go on.
Dr. Bandy Lee (17:29):
Poverty is the deadliest form of violence, I often say because it kills more individuals than all behavioral violence combined. Homicides, suicides, wars, absolutely. The abortion ban, I have said from the beginning that it's about femicide, not about saving a few fetal cells. We're seeing the results of the killings of women. Why are the institutions failing? I stated from the very beginning when the American Psychiatric Association actually intervened and enlisted the New York Times to essentially block us from all the major media at the height of our public influence. At that point, we were the number one topic of national conversation. It came three months after the publication of our book, the Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessed a President, which was a unprecedented New York Times bestseller of its kind macmillan, one of the five big publishers was not prepared for it, that it took them five weeks of repeat printings just to keep up with the demand.
(18:36):
At that point, we were invited by over 50 Congress members who met with us privately and they told us they were depending on us to educate the public medically so that they could intervene politically. That surprised me. I mean, it really astonished me that they would depend on us, but at that time, mental health was, the medical field was a small margin of neutrality that one could say was not partisan, and we were speaking as independent mental health professionals, not anyone hired by any side, not the president's personal physician, not actually when doing these assessments. It is important that we were non-governmental and independent even though we were marginalized by Dr. Ronnie Jackson himself, who was never qualified to do a mental fitness evaluation of the president and as a White House employed physician. And he was never trained to do a fitness evaluation as an emergency physician.
(19:49):
And yet he gave his, I would say, the most extraordinary act of medical malpractice in the history of medicine when he declared him fit against our assessment and medical consensus among thousands of mental health professionals at the time who were stating that he was mentally unfit and psychologically dangerous to remain in his office. And so at that time, even the drafter of the 25th Amendment was thanking us and considering us to be crucial to the implementation of the 25th Amendment, which was not as non-viable as it seems now. At that time, Congress truly felt that that was the means of intervention, and there was a bill that was out. The amendment allows for a other body instituted by the Congress to initiate the 25th Amendment. And so that would've been the proper response and the most reasonable response and solution to this problem. When was made non-viable by the intervention of the American Psychiatric Association extremely aggressively coming out and calling us armchair psychiatrists, that we were using psychiatry as a political tool for a self-aggrandizement.
(21:02):
The kinds of language I never even imagined of a professional association when I did not fall under their jurisdiction, I had already resigned from the A PA because they were taking a third of their funding from the pharmaceutical industry and I wasn't a member. And also the Goldwater rule was never even adopted by any other mental health association was not allowed onto any licensing board guidelines because of violation of First Amendment, though it was an obscure, outdated rule that nobody even, not even psychiatrists had heard about because no training program even taught it at that time. And yet it became a household phrase in the public discourse because essentially the nation was gaslit into believing that any mental health professional who was speaking up was being unethical, that they were not supposed to say anything unless they had personally examined and gotten consent from the president.
(21:58):
No, that involves only diagnosis. The public doesn't have to know about a person's private diagnosis, which is mainly done for treatment. The public needs to know if the president is mentally fit and if he is dangerous to the public that is actually a legally and ethically obligated duty on the part of mental health professionals. If someone were erratic out in the street and dangerous to people for psychological reasons, we are obligated to intervene even if it's not our patient. In fact, the moment they become dangerous, they become our responsibility because we have a responsibility to society. And multiple other lawsuits like the Parasoft doctrine have established that even when non-patients are in danger, we have a duty to warn and duty to protect potential victims. And certainly society is our patient according to the preamble to our ethics, we have a primary responsibility to protect society.
(22:56):
When society was in danger, we came forward in unprecedented ways by the thousands. And so our book was an instant New York Times bestseller in ways that no one had expected such a book to be. And the public's demand showed how much they wanted to hear from us when there weren't enough books available, people were driving across the state. We have all kinds of stories of how people were trying to access our book when it first came out, whenever we published an op-ed or an article or an interview, it was a number one read of that day, that week, that weekend, be it the New York Times, the Guardian Political. We were the number one. That's how much people were longing to hear from us and hungering for access to our assessments. And that was when the American Psychiatric Association intervened. Within two or three weeks, we were blacked out of the major media.
(23:51):
No more interviews. I continued to be invited. I counted up to 70 and then lost count invitations from producers on M-S-N-B-C-C-N-N. In fact, there was only one invitation that went through and I had a standing ovation from the producers because they had invited me about 50 times. And finally I got through, but once my interview aired, the host was soon fired. It was Brian Stelter from Reliable Sources. So that was the kind of censorship we were experiencing very deliberately from our end because our being so much in the public eye was unexpected, but that was organic, that was by public demand, that was by the enthusiasm of producers programs. I in fact, was truly impressed that there seemed to be no stigma against mental health issues. It seemed that we were being invited as the appropriate experts of the appropriate topic, and that was why Congress members felt that we were the key to their ability to make this unprecedented intervention.
(25:00):
But it was the proper intervention. It was a mental health intervention to a mental health problem. When we were blacked out from the media, I made the prediction that when a mental health intervention to a mental health problem fails, then in this era, every other intervention is going to fail unless it's done in the proper way with mental health consultation. The Congress members were thinking of impeachment when Nancy Pelosi finally, finally, when we were trying to put out our recommendation that a speedy impeachment was above all the most important for mental health or management of behavior, that speedy impeachment and kind of an encyclopedic charges impeachment commensurate with the actual crimes rather than just two charges and an ironclad case that she was advocating. No, we said that for behavioral management it was speedy impeachment, total coverage of his crimes that were important. But of course it was done in the opposite way came in very, very late.
(26:01):
We at that point put out a letter with more than 900 mental health professionals signing onto it. And it was in the news as well that she consult with us that this needed to be done not as a legal intervention or political intervention, but above all a mental health intervention. Of course, that didn't happen. And the impeachment failed, bolstered his status as a victim and as Teflon on Invincible president, the second impeachment also failed when the Senate was showing signs of not convicting him. It was important to show the footage over and over and to have witnesses. The House of Representatives was all for that at that point, and somehow the leadership completely shut that down. We said that in that case, even the psychological intervention that was possible through this second impeachment would fail exactly what happened. January 6th was turned into a patriotic, peaceful event.
(26:55):
And these are the kinds of things that we warned that if a mental health problem, primarily an overwhelmingly mental health problem was not intervened with, would be undermined or even turned around by what I've been calling Trump contagion, meaning the spread of Donald Trump's symptoms, that eventually the population, eventually the Congress institutions, the public would lose its capacity to hold him accountable or even to recognize him for what he is. Because for all these institutions to work for any job or task or function to work, there's basic mental capacity that is required. And when that is taken away, nothing can work any longer. It's not about being Democrat versus Republican, having the correct laws in place, corruption and everything, all of this could still be viable if the mental capacity to carry out the function were in place. And that was in danger of being lost when the primary individual was not intervened with in the proper way.
Andrea Chalupa (28:01):
Thank you for bringing up and reminding everyone that Nancy Pelosi slow walked impeachment and she also failed to use the power the Democrats had in the house to really show the American people through hearings, investigations must see TV as we were calling for at the time of laying out all of Trump's being a sociopath and all of the family's corruption, including Jared and Ivanka because it's not just Trump. And instead, like you said, she just created excuses. We witnessed this at the time, and it's in the Gaslit nation transcripts and gaslit nation pod.com where we were covering the absence, the derelict of duty under Nancy Pelosi.
Dr. Bandy Lee (28:46):
I have witnessed it from within Congress when Congress members were coming up with solutions just incredibly courageous and noble solutions. She would crush them like a dictator, in fact, and I could not understand why. And then she would go out in public, take credit for their work, which she had impeded. And I have in fact said that she more than anyone, helped Donald Trump because his followers or the Republicans, we expect them to follow along and buttress him. But we do not expect the leader, the Speaker of the House to be acting in ways that would only pretend to be opposing Trump. But in fact, helping him in every possible way and to have the guise of opposing him is actually more harmful than appearing as if helping him. And I would also add that when even Chuck Schumer was willing to have a press conference, congressional press conference of mental health experts to speak about Donald Trump's impairments right after the Helsinki Summit with Vladimir Putin, everyone was wondering what is wrong that Donald Trump is so obsequious before Vladimir Putin and even willing to contradict his 17 intelligence agencies,
Andrea Chalupa (30:08):
You thought in Trump's body language he looked like a dog on a leash next to Vladimir Putin at that Helsinki Summit.
Dr. Bandy Lee (30:16):
Yes. And we were all set to go. And I had invited the most renowned psychiatrists, the legends of our times as they are called, and we were all ready to speak and she nixed it. She was also the one responsible for canceling our speaking before Congress in September of 2017, right after my conference at Yale talking about the ethics of mental health professionals speaking, warning the public about the psychological dangers of Donald Trump, multiple Congress members actually reached out to me and one former leader who arranged a meeting before Congress to be able to speak about this issue. And she was the one at that time, Trump was coming out and calling Pelosi, Nancy and Schumer, Chuck. And she thought she was going to be able to negotiate with him without our help, but I could have told her then that it was not going to be possible.
(31:11):
It was not genuine, and she was not going to get anywhere without consultations with us about the serious, serious mental impairments that he has and how extremely manipulative and deceptive he was going to be. And everyone who would deal with him would do better not dealing with him than dealing with him without our expertise. He also canceled a town hall, a congressional town hall that a champion of our cause in the Senate who's no longer there who arranged for a town hall. And she apparently didn't like it getting in the news. And so once it got out in the news, it was stopped. And I can't be clear it was her, but that's my conjecture after multiple of her actions that I've witnessed, yes, every time I criticize Pelosi for not acting as she should have. In fact, she has been pretty much demolished all of all efforts on the part of many Congress members who were coming up with the correct solutions. And whenever I criticize her, I'm completely ostracized and in a way that I feel that she herself has built a personality cult. And that was her focus rather than doing the right thing, actually fulfilling the function, the important function and role that she had at the time. And I don't know why she's done that. My expertise is not in that area as far as I can tell. She is the one who has helped Donald Trump the most during his presidency
Andrea Chalupa (32:45):
Over the years on Gaslit Nation. We've also wondered why does Nancy Pelosi help Donald Trump and fall short of taking the necessary measures in this time of great danger to hold 'em accountable? And you mentioned there's members of Congress that were willing to stick their necks out and launch bold initiatives to try to contain the threat of Trump. But Nancy Pelosi turnout return kept holding them back. We've always pointed out that the Democratic Party gets a lot of money from Len Blavatnik, the Russian oligarch that you're not allowed to call a Russian oligarch who's wrapped up in business deals with a lot of the Russian oligarchs who got sanctioned because of the Kremlin bringing Trump to power in 2016 because of the Kremlin's full scale invasion of Ukranians. And then in addition to that, Nancy Pelosi's extremely loyal to Israel, we're talking about the current genocidal government of Israel under Netanyahu and so is Trump. And so that is sort of the speculation is that she's serving those larger interests. And Nancy Pelosi is one member of Congress told me she is the cash queen of the Democratic Party. She is their largest fundraiser by far. That is what keeps her in power. That is what keeps her dominance and their submission as a party to her. And I think that's also important to point out.
Dr. Bandy Lee (34:06):
Yes, one of the most astonishing things to me was just how submissive the party wasn't just how hierarchical and in my view, more reflective of a dictatorship than a democracy.
Andrea Chalupa (34:20):
It's incredibly scary. And now here we are and there's no turning back from this now. And even her own husband was nearly killed with a hammer by a mag cultist. So you've gone into the psychology of Donald Trump. What about the psychology of his enablers like Pelosi, like Mitch McConnell who's now trying to distance himself with a biography where he wants to set the record straight that he always saw through Trump, but yet he's defending Trump, including most recently his fascist rally in Madison Square Garden. So what insight can you share on the psychology of Trump enablers?
Dr. Bandy Lee (34:59):
Corruption, the striving for power, political opportunism, all these things apply. What I see more prominently though is Trump contagion. In other words, that's a label I've given for the emotional contagion that Donald Trump brings. The spread of symptoms, the spread of symptoms occurs through emotional bonds, but it could also occur through opportunism, any kind of alignment where first you are adhering or helping him because you see an incredible opportunity, an unprecedented opportunity in terms of nefarious political motives to gain grounds to pass legislatures that would never have a chance under a rational president for the kinds of political following, the fervent following, he asses through the extremism of certain trumps or mini trumps, and also the ratings, the ratings of networks and media organizations. They've seen nothing like it. So, so much so that I think someone, the leader of CBS or someone has said that it's terrible for the nation, but great for our ratings, that kind of truly irrational, fervent following comes with mental pathology.
(36:25):
We know that emotional contagion happens even with just normal emotions. We talk about how laughter is contagious, how yawns are contagious. We know from social media studies that more so than rational, truthful assertions that negative messages or negative emotions actually are more contagious than positive ones. But when it comes to frank mental symptoms, they're actually far more contagious than say strategic lies or other disinformation. So when it comes to symptoms, it becomes truly dangerous because it has the ability to escalate people's loyalty and adherence multifold to the point where they even destroy themselves. That's happened to Rudy Giuliani. It's happened to Adolf Hitler's enablers, the millionaire class that supported him believing that his popularity and his policies would bolster their status and income. It turns out that they pretty much led the whole nation to destruction. And the same is happening with the billionaire class now.
(37:33):
And so when it gets to that point of irrationality, danger to even one's own safety and destruction of the entire nation, if not all of humankind, then that gets to the level of TRO contagion and eventually at its endpoint collective psychosis, shared psychosis. There's a process by which after the contagion of symptoms happens, there's a shared psychosis, which is what I alluded to briefly earlier, where the secondary individuals appear identical to the primary individual. So in other words, the primary individual is the only one with the primary disorder, be it psychosis, delusions. It doesn't have to get to the level of psychosis. It could be paranoia, delusions, violence, proneness. These things can spread to the secondary individuals to the point where the secondary individuals who were previously healthy or only predisposed look as if they have the primary illness, a full-fledged illness. And that is where in the clinical setting, you take a careful history to figure out who among all these identical people is the primary individual, the first person who had the symptoms, the dominant person who spread his symptoms among his followers, and that's the only person you need to hospitalize and separate from the rest.
(38:55):
And the rest, just as dramatically as they took on the shared psychosis returned to normal. This phenomenon has been documented for 150 years. We've downplayed it in our era because of pharmaceutical industry co-opting the psychiatric field. In my opinion, symptoms are always psychosocial. They spread, and it's not surprising that mental symptoms spread more rapidly in the social media and mass media environment, and you don't need physical exposure for spread. So they spread far more rapidly and readily among the population. When it occurred in Nazi Germany, Eric from a social psychologist who escaped the regime called it ion, which is another term for collective psychosis, it was translated into shared psychosis at a certain point in the US and then induced symptoms nowadays to downplay its effect. But it's really a shared psychosis. And as in when shared psychotic disorders among two people, we call it, or it could be any number of people for SAN in the family in a group and when it's among millions.
(40:15):
So it is a very well-known phenomenon. It's an expected result. It's a predicted result that we warned against in 2017 when we stated that Donald Trump in the office of the presidency posed more so than a threat himself, a public health threat in that the public mental health would eventually be affected and public safety would eventually be undermined. So that is what has eventually come to pass exactly as we predicted with the same severity and the same timeline that we gave it back in 2017. And that's what I describe in the book, the Psychology of Trunk Contagion. And there's also a new book out by mental health experts that came out with our last major conference, which was held at the National Press Club, where gathered 19 top national security experts together with the most renowned mental health experts. Together, they convened a two, highlight the critical national security threat that Donald Trump.
(41:22):
There's a joint statement that came out on the website of the World Mental Health Coalition. Everything about the conference can be found on dangerous case.org. The new that mental health professionals now, including many more renowned mental health experts, the top in the field have all gathered to release the more dangerous case of Donald Trump. 40 psychiatrists and mental health experts warn anew. So it contains everything, all our warnings through the years. Our current warnings, as well as the latest document that's of interest are dangerousness risk assessment, which was submitted to the Manhattan District Criminal Court when we thought that the sentencing would happen in July. We submitted our pre-sentencing report in June, which was a dangerousness risk assessment, which included a psychopathy checklist of Donald Trump's psychopathy measures. Dangerousness does not require a personal interview. He is off the charts. It's a quantitative way of measuring his dangerousness. We felt that we had enough information to do the checklist, and I would say that he ranks right up there with mass murders of history. Someone brought up Jonestown with Jim Jones, Charles Manson, all these individuals would rank among his score.
Singing (42:51):
Who did you talk to today? Did you manage to slave anybody because we need a change and change happens one conversation at a time. Did they give you some flack or were they open to hear what? Just saying, because we're all the riding track, we know when change happens, one conversation at time, change happens. One conversation at time, change happens. One conversation, change happens. Person to person, do it. One conversation at a time when the light goes on, word A, when change happens, one conversation at time, change happens. One conversation at a time. Change happens. One conversation change happens person to person. You can do it one conversation at time alone. We always have it in us. Now re is knocking at our door. We can count on the power of the people. The time is now. Democracy is on the line. Change happens one conversation at a time, Change happens one conversation, change happens. Person, person do it. One conversation at a time. Change happens. Convers a happens, change happens one conversation at a time. ...
Andrea Chalupa (46:00):
Our discussion continues. And you can get access to that by setting up at the truth to level or higher. On Patreon. Gaslit Nation hosts come as you are political salons every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern can't make it live. Recordings are available to our community On Patreon, our salons are your space to vent, ask questions, and connect with other listeners who also really, really hate Nazis. Mark your calendar for our special events in October, including our How to Make a Podcast Workshop Publishing Thursday, October 24th, and our live taping with Dr. Bandi Lee, October 29 at 12:00 PM Eastern on the psychology of Trump and his MAGA Colt supporters at the Democracy Defender level or higher. Submit your questions for our monthly bonus q and a show your questions, shape our show. Subscribe today to get bonus shows. All shows ad free invites to exclusive events and more discounted annual memberships are available at patreon.com/gaslit.
(46:59):
It's all hands on deck. Gaslit Nation is phone banking and a battleground states, so Sister District every Wednesday in October at 6:00 PM Eastern and with Indivisible Thursday, October 17 at 7:00 PM Eastern and again on Election Eve, RSVP at the Gaslit Nation Survival Guide on gaslit nation pod.com. Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. Our production manager is Nicholas Torres, and our associate producer is Carlin Daigle. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and check out our Patreon. It keeps us going. Original music and Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Bi Issenberg, Nick Farr. Damian Ariaga, and Carlin Daigle. Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smite of the New York based firm order. Thank you so much. Hamish Gas Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level on Paton and Hire. Ice Bear is defiant. Sidney Davies worked for Better Prep for Trouble. Lily Auki. John Sheth. Larry Gusan. D Scott, Ann Bertino, David East, Joseph Mara Jr. Sean Berg, Kristen Custer, Kevin Gannon, Sandra Colemans, Katie maus, James D. Leonard. Leo Chalupa, Carol Goad, Marcus j Trent, Joe Darcy and Marshall Deal. Sinfield. Nicole Spear. Abby Road. Jans, stri. Rasmussen. Mark. Mark, Sarah Gray, Diana Gallagher, Leah Campbell, Abby Vos and Tanya Chalupa. Thank you to everyone who supports the show. We could not make Gaslit Nation without you.
Chris Gethard (48:51):
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