Transcript of Trump's Midterm Defeat Takes Toll as Health Concerns Emerge w/ Dr. Bandy Lee

I mean, this is supposed to be the President of the United States. How utterly embarrassing. Has he delivered that 20-minute-long remark about ballroom construction in front of a signed steel beam with the inscription "Love"? I mean, seriously, WTF? The Wall Street Journal reporting that aides to Donald Trump say it's just a waste of time to even tell him to stop talking about the ballroom, because that's all he's doing. He's holding these very long meetings like every single week, almost every day, about the ballroom and how he wants to give people tours of the ballroom and the staff.

It's just like, "I know what we can do about it." I mean, he's an absolute lunatic. And then you saw him yesterday talk about the kitchen. "I got a kitchen in the ballroom, and I know how to build kitchens." Play this clip.

Bandy Lee, great to see you. I want to talk about Donald Trump's behavior leading up to and following this major loss for Trump and MAGA Republicans in the midterms. What I've been noticing about his behavior today is he's kind of playing, it seems, like a victim card a little bit more, and he's coming out a little bit more. I mean, we've always seen this kind of weakness, and it goes back and forth, but I've noticed a little bit more like doddering behavior.

And, you know, he went to the ballroom today again, which is like the safe space. And while he was with the, you know, the press even more so than before, he was like, "Look, you like my helipad. You like my helipad. You like my helipad." And it almost felt part of this, like, victim cocoon that he was kind of playing as he tries to get his bearings. And because the defeat was so massive, I'm just curious, you know, what it is that we're observing there, because that's what I've noticed the day after, at least.

And he's actually asking for containment. That's what we do not recognize, that individuals who are violent and dangerous are actually comforted when they are contained. So we're seeing the beginnings of that possibility. We have to keep going for him to be safe and for the rest of us also to be safe, because otherwise, once he gathers himself back to the state where he's going to be fighting for his life, for his psychic life, then it could become perhaps the most dangerous period in American history.

And he's been so unrestrained and coddled, it's like, you know, this experience is—that's why I've always advocated for it. You just got to be strong. You got to go—you got to just go right at him and just basically say, "Enough is enough." That's intolerable. You can't behave like that.

Talk to us about the paths and the way this could go, which is actually if there is robust pushback and oversight, what that path looks like. But if he feels he can kind of get away with it, what does that path look like? Explain what these divergent paths—or maybe there's more than just two paths—but what does that look like?

And if he loses the will to live, then we're very close to him taking the entire world down with him because of the technology he has available at his disposal. And I've been speaking about how easy it is for an American president to launch nuclear weapons without any kind of way to counter it, to assess his capacity, or whether or not it's the right order.

There's only a way to check whether or not the order was given. And of course, during the Trump administration, he has made nuclear weapons vastly easier to use. And additionally, he's highly attracted to nuclear weapons. Someone who feels powerless will simply wish to go for the biggest bomb if none of the other bombs work in this lost war against Iran and his diminishing support from the public, then he will wish to demonstrate his power.

And that is the fear because once he does that, that would be the end of humanity.

So what does that actually look like, though, to continue to set the limits, though, to kind of let him know and put him in his place where he is, but also being mindful of this kind of existential nature? Where is that balance? How do you think of it?

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment allows for a body to be formed by Congress. It doesn't have to be the Cabinet. The Cabinet is an option, but another body can be formed. And having the House and the Senate—Democrats have been pursuing this since the very start of the first Trump presidency—a commission can be formed of physicians and former presidents, former high officials that can evaluate him, that can assess his fitness or dangerousness without having to go to a White House physician who is also a military subordinate and beholden to Donald Trump.

That doesn't work. So it would form an independent body capable of assessing the president's capacity to serve in office and also the kind of assessments and treatments that would be necessary and that could include hospitalization.

And then from the outside world looking in, we all look crazy, we all look psychotic because even if we know that the leader is that ill, when we use normal language to talk about it, even those who aren't directly in the cult still exhibit the normalization of the psychotic behavior. I want our viewers to hear you describe that, you know, and then how do we in this moment where Trump has suffered this devastating and catastrophic loss, what can the nation do now specifically to try to get out of this battered nation syndrome and get back to reality?

More Americans have died than all its wars combined, including the Civil War. So we're quite a traumatized nation at this point. We have to break out of this conditioning. And the first step is to face reality for what it is, that in fact we have a highly mentally impaired person as president and that he needs treatment, he needs behavioral management, and we need to be safe from his dangerousness.

So addressing it as a mental health problem that it is, consulting with mental health experts who do this work on a daily basis, recognize what we are seeing and know what level of intervention is necessary. I've stated multiple times that he needs to be institutionalized. He has met all the criteria and for the public to be safe.

There is no better solution than containment. And this is something that the people need to demand. The people don't recognize the power that they have because they're in this battered nation syndrome, as you described. They've also taken on his symptoms. Trump contagion is another way I've described it, that when you have a mentally impaired person in an influential office for a prolonged period of time, people start taking on his delusions, his violence proneness, his detachment from reality.

And this is what we need to break ourselves away from by recognizing that what we're seeing is a psychiatric problem.

And then she was running against, though, a pediatrician, Dr. Annie Andrews, who was actually pitching people on love and empathy and getting out of it. And the people of South Carolina chose the path out of it. I think that's a good sign. I mean, from a psychiatric standpoint, you had those two models. You had the battered nation manifesting, and then you had the kind of counter to it. And a lot of the races that I feel like we've seen, James Tallarico, Ken Paxton, Adam Hamilton, Roger Marshall, I could keep going on, but you had that dichotomy.

And that's why I said this election didn't feel all that political. It felt about values and principles. Or you could also say a deeper psychic battle in a way, huh?

And it seemed, you know, some people were saying homosexual disinhibition, you know, is Donald Trump harm, you know, is he gay? You know, was he in, you know, was he struggling with these feelings as a kid and he suppressed it? You know, I know it's very difficult to diagnose it based on what you've seen and in general it is, but like, what is that? Like, from what you've seen in the field, why was he continuing to talk about a man's ass over and over again in a way that looked that he was sexually attracted to the man and he wanted the crowd to know that he seemed to be attracted to this man's backside?

And he abides by the rule that might makes right. That's why he's always obsessed with garnering more power.

And it does seem that a lot of their responses and how they've dealt with the escalation ladder has been rooted in an understanding of his arrested development, that he is someone who responds to things as though a petulant two-year-old to five-year-old is. And it seems that they know exactly what to say and how to say it and how to kind of inspire the fear and that they're actually directing these messages in a very psychiatric targeted way that hits him and scares him and messes with the emotions.

And when you have someone in power who isn't mentally fortified against that, it seems that you're also able to have outside forces, whether it's Iran or Russia or whoever, you know, Kim Jong-un or to know exactly how to poke and how to prod and how to freeze and how to destabilize and traumatize. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that before we go.

In fact, we have done everything possible to block expertise in this area. We've never had an era where we've had a whole class of experts excluded from the media, from public discourse, and that is mental health. And of course, there was a specific intervention done by the American Psychiatric Association in order to effectuate this. And I warn that our being the most critical expertise that's needed at this time, that if we go silent, then nothing else will work.

And that's what I said in early 2018. And that is the result.