Psychiatrists: Urgent action must be taken against Trump for creating Iran crisis

A group of mental health professionals has said US President Donald Trump is “dangerous and incapacitated” and an urgent action must be taken by Congress after he ordered the assassination of Iranian Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.

The US military carried out an airstrike on the order of Trump at Baghdad’s international airport January 3, assassinating General Soleimani and the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, as well as eight other companions.

The World Mental Health Coalition made the statement a month after they warned Congress that the stress of impeachment by the House of Representatives could cause Trump's mental state to deteriorate to a dangerous level, The Independent reported.

"We have been seriously warning about this for some time. The US Congress must act immediately and forcefully without further delay," said Yale Medical School Professor Dr Bandy Lee, George Washington University Professor Dr John Zinner, and former CIA profiler Dr Jerrold Post in a statement obtained by The Independent.

Following Iran’s retaliation for the US assassination of the top Iranian general, Trump made a scripted statement from the White House on Wednesday where he struggled to pronounce words and sniffed repeatedly.

The psychiatrists said  Trump is "psychologically and mentally both dangerous and incapacitated" and has a presentation that is "consistent with a person who, when his falsely inflated self-image is questioned, or when his emotional need for adulation is thwarted, lashes out in an attempt to restore his sense of potency and command over others.”

They noted that the commander-in-chief of the US military is "the person in most need (of psychological evaluations) and who is a maximum danger.”

 They added that current tensions with Iran make this a "critical time,” at which Americans "cannot wait any longer to deal with the dangerous situation caused by a mentally compromised person acting in erratic, reckless, impulsive, and destructive ways.”

They said Congress must "act immediately to take any war-making powers out of his hands,” and added that it is "imperative that the Congress be equipped with accurate information" from those in the medical community who are qualified in "assessment and management of psychological dangers.”

"We urge Congress to consult with us for a profile, if not evaluation, and to take seriously the mental health aspects that are at play in this mentally impaired president," they said.

The US House on Thursday approved a resolution that aims to prevent Trump from launching a military action against Iran.

In a 224-to-194 vote, the Democratic-controlled House approved War Powers Resolution amid increased tensions between Iran and the United States following the assassination of General Soleimani on January 3.

The vote reflected the deep divide in Congress between Democrats, who accuse Trump of acting recklessly in the assassination of Iran’s top general and Trump’s fellow Republicans who strongly support the president.

House passes resolution to restrict Trump’s war powers against Iran

The US House passed a resolution to limit President Donald Trump’s war powers against Iran.

While Dr Lee and her colleagues have previously offered themselves to be consulted by impeachment investigators, she told The Independent last month they felt it necessary to come forward once more because the US president is “is ramping up his conspiracy theories” and “showing a great deal of cruelty and vindictiveness” in his “accelerated, repetitive tweets,” which she explained are signs that he is “doubling and a tripling down on his delusions”.

“I believe that they fit the pattern of delusions rather than just plain lies,” she continued, pointing to the claim he made during a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, that “many legal scholars” were “looking at the transcripts” of his 25 July phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and agreeing with his description of the call as “absolutely perfect” as an example of his pathology.

Dr Lee, an expert on violence prevention, acknowledged that members of congress – especially Republicans who are supportive of the president – might dismiss the warning she and her colleagues are delivering as just a product of differences of political opinion, but stressed that the fact that they should be taken seriously because their training enables them to recognize Mr Trump is exhibiting “definitive signs of severe pathology of someone who requires an advanced level of care” and who “meets every criterion of lacking a rational  decision making capacity”.

Trump’s speech about US assassination shows his ‘level of stupidity’: Analyst

US President Donald Trump’s speech on Wednesday about the American assassination of a top Iranian general and Tehran’s swift retaliation illustrates the US leader’s “level of stupidity”, a political analyst in Maryland says.

“The one thing that we are trained to do is to distinguish between what is healthy and what is abnormal, and when the pattern of abnormality fits, then we recognize that it is pathology and not part of the wide variation of which healthy human beings are capable,” she said. “What we recognize is a pattern of disease and that may look like another political ideology or another political style to the everyday person who is unfamiliar with pathology, but to us it is a very recognizable pattern.”

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