Alert: Democratic Leaders Rounding Up Psychiatrists To Declare Trump Unfit for Office
Many years ago, the American Psychiatric Association came up with what’s colloquially referred to as the “Goldwater rule.” It was introduced after an article that stated more than a thousand psychiatrists thought Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential candidate, was mentally unfit for office.
In extremely simplistic terms, what the Goldwater rule says is that it’s unethical for psychiatrists to offer their opinion of a public figure who they haven’t examined themselves.
“On occasion, psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media,” the APA’s ethical guidelines read. “In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”
And since the Democrats are nothing if not unethical, they’re going to host “a Capitol Hill event featuring psychiatrists who will warn that President Trump is unfit for office based on his mental health,” according to Washington Examiner.
“The event will be led by Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist and editor of ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,’ a book that argues psychiatrists have a responsibility to warn the public when a president is dangerous,” the website reported Wednesday.
The argument that Lee and her supporters are using is that they’re not diagnosing the president, they’re just saying his “mental instability” is so manifest that anyone can speak on it. Which, of course, is why a Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist and others in the field are speaking on it.
“The president’s condition has been visibly deteriorating to the point where there’s a lot of talk right now about his mental state beyond mental health professionals,” Lee said.
“It no longer takes a mental health professional to recognize the seriousness of the current presidency.”
Again, if that’s your wiggle room around the Goldwater rule, then why have psychiatrists deliver this speech? After all, it no longer takes “mental health professional[s] to recognize the seriousness of the current presidency,” just have the Democrats do it and cut out the middleman. Putting psychiatrists on the dais is a clear attempt to lend a patina of medical legitimacy to the old “Trump’s crazy!” line.
Lee said that the event would be happening “imminently soon within the next couple of weeks” — though there was no exact date given — and she said that it would be (try to stifle your laughter here) bipartisan. Lee said she would reconsider the event if no Republicans showed up, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this never happens. Of course, I’d also be surprised if she never considers GOP attendance at this shindig for a second.
“Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky., who has called for Trump’s impeachment, confirmed the event was in the works, but said it would be more likely to occur in July because lawmakers have a full plate in June with spending bills,” the Examiner reported.
“We’re planning to put together an event,” Yarmuth said. “She’s calling it a town hall. We haven’t actually determined the format, but it’s going to be an event where she is going to present her findings, and media will be invited.”
Yarmouth said he thought the same thing that Lee did: “That the president is manifesting dangerous behavior and the American people need to be alert to it.”
“Their position is that as professionals, when they see patterns of behavior that are endangering people, that they have a professional obligation to go public and alert the people who are threatened, and in this case it’s the American people,” Yarmuth said.
“I think the American people deserve to have wider dissemination of that perspective.”
Participants haven’t been named yet. One Democrat congressman, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, has said he was asked to participate and likely would have talked about the 25th Amendment and removing a president from office for unfitness. (Raskin also has a bill before Congress that would establish a congressional panel to ascertain presidential fitness, something that has as much chance of becoming law as this event has of drawing any other Republicans not named Justin Amash.) However, the representative had scheduling conflicts in terms of appearing on a panel in May and hadn’t heard about a replacement date.
According to the Examiner, Dr. Lee also said that “attendees at the town hall would watch a condensed video that was recorded at a Washington, D.C., event held at the National Press Club in March that featured 13 experts discussing how they didn’t think Trump was fit for office. The experts, who came from the fields of mental health, philosophy, history, and journalism, said they were worried about the president’s access to nuclear weapons and the impact his administration would have on climate change.”
Dr. Lee plans to invite every member of Congress to the event, which will allow for questions. My first one, were I invited: “You’re arguing the president is crazy, but you just hosted an event dedicated to that proposition and invited every member of Congress in the hope that there would be bipartisan support for this worldview. Do you not see the irony?”
But then, this is how partisan our politics have gotten. We’re at the point where psychiatrists are being rounded up to try to prove the president is non compos mentis. Imagine this happening under Clinton or Obama. This would be laughed at, and anyone who participated would be shunned from the medical community.
Now, this is being considered legitimate. This is why the Goldwater rule was put into place — and why it remains as relevant as ever.
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