A Yale psychiatrist has recently offered Speaker Nancy Pelosi some advice on how to best utilize President Trump’s bizarre six-page letter that he sent to her prior to his impeachment.
According to Salon , Professor Bandy X. Lee told the publication that Pelosi should have Trump submitted for an “involuntary” psychiatric evaluation and said the speaker can use his scathing letter as proof of the president’s waning mental health.
In December, Trump officially became the third U.S. president to have ever been impeached.
On the eve of this historic vote, the POTUS sent Pelosi a six-page letter in which he lashed out at the speaker and vowed to defeat her party in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
“Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution,” Trump wrote in the blistering text. “I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election.”
He added, “They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power.”
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Professor Lee frequently “translates” Trump’s tweets on her own Twitter account, and has now done the same with his lengthy letter to Pelosi.
In an interview with Salon , Lee said that the letter serves as Trump’s “confession”, arguing that the president effectively projected his motives onto the House speaker.
In fact, the psychiatrist revealed that her biggest takeaway from Trump’s letters is that the POTUS “is highly unwell.”
In that same interview, Lee warned that Pelosi is not doing enough to respond to the president.
“As a coworker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not,” Lee explained. “Anyone can call 911 to report someone who seems dangerous, and family members are the most typical ones to do so. But so can coworkers, and even passersby on the street.”
Lee added, “The law dictates who can determine right to treatment, or civil commitment, and in all 50 U.S. states this includes a psychiatrist.”
Although she praised Pelosi for witholding the articles of impeachment against Trump, Lee also warned that this could risk making Trump even more dangerous.
Ultimately, the psychiatrist argued, it is Trump’s mental health, not his impeachment, that will prove to be his undoing.
As she explained,
“Impeachment is much needed as ‘limit setting’, and the House speaker has done well to set limits on the Senate by delaying the articles. But we simply cannot ignore the dangers. I am beginning to believe that a mental health hold, which we have tried to avoid, will become inevitable.”
Lee isn’t the first person to argue that the letter proves the president is mentally unwell.
After it went public, former President Bill Clinton’s press secretary, Joe Lockhart, branded the letter “stupid” and said it proved that Trump was “freaking out” ahead of the impeachment vote.
Others have voiced concerns about Trump’s mental well-being even before he sent Pelosi the lengthy letter.
George Conway previously said the president’s mental health would get him fired from other jobs, while a total of 350 health professionals signed a sign letter to Congress prior to impeachment claimnig Trump’s mental health is deteriorating dangerously.
As Lee said, the letter perfectly demonstrates the president’s mental state and should be taken seriously.
“[Y]ou can tell how unwell [Trump] is by the degree he cannot deviate from his defenses: mainly, denial and projection,” she told Salon . “We often say he is ‘doubling down.’ A truly sick person will be unable to show any tolerance of ambiguity, doubt or flexibility in thinking. “
She continued, “The letter, like his lengthy interviews or his chronic tweeting over years, is unable to show any variation from the characteristic rigidity of pathology.”
h/t: Salon
