‘Docile’ Donald Trump Can Be Easily Talked Into Resigning Using Psychological Profile, Yale Psychiatrist Says
Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee has repeatedly issued public warnings about what she describes as Donald Trump’s “mental pathology,” calling the state of his mental health a “public health emergency.” But on Saturday, the fifth day of the Senate impeachment trial against Trump, Lee issued a new call — saying that Trump could be persuaded to resign.
As she watched the impeachment proceedings, she said via her Twitter account, she saw lawmakers “fumble and so predictably fail” in their effort to persuade Republican senators to vote in favor of removing Trump from office. Lee then said that the use of a “psychological profile” of Trump could be used to talk him into stepping down.
“Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un obviously have a psychological profile on him,” Lee wrote in her Twitter thread, adding that those authoritarian leaders — of Russia, China, and North Korea, respectively — have used their knowledge of Trump’s psychology to “maximum advantage.”
The United States possesses “first-rate mental health knowledge” but has not used it regarding Trump, Lee added.
Trump, Lee wrote, can be “the most docile person on Earth.” As a result, a psychological profile could make him “the easiest person perhaps to persuade to resign,” the psychiatrist said.
Other commentators have called on Trump to resign. In December, following Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives, law professor F. Michael Higginbotham authored an op-ed for CNN.com urging Trump to resign for “patriotic” reasons.
“Trump should resign so the country can begin the process of healing,” Higginbotham wrote, calling Trump to take inspiration from the “moment of grace” offered by President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 rather than face a divisive and contentious impeachment proceeding over his role in the Watergate scandal.
However, Democrats in the impeachment trial have expressed open skepticism that appeals to Trump’s patriotism would be effective in any way. In one speech, lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff told senators that Trump cannot be trusted “to do what’s right for this country.”
Also in December, Trump’s former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci offered a prediction that Trump would resign because he would not be able to “handle the heat” of witness testimony in the impeachment trial — particularly if former National Security Adviser John Bolton and current White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney are compelled to testify.
But in the opening day of the trial, Senate Republicans voted unanimously to block all such witness testimony, though the possibility remains that witnesses could be called at the conclusion of the trial, rather than at the beginning.
