Donald Trump Is ‘An Existential Threat To Humanity,’ Mental Health Experts Say
In a Friday op-ed penned for Raw Story, mental health experts Alan D. Blotcky, David M. Reiss and Seth D. Norrholm described President Donald Trump as “an existential threat to humanity.” Blotcky is a clinical psychologist in Birmingham, Alabama, Reiss is a psychiatrist based in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and Norrholm is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.
The trio opened the column by describing the upcoming presidential election as “the most consequential” one in people’s lifetimes and slammed Trump as a “menace to our country.”
The columnists pointed to statements from former White House Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci and Lincoln Project co-founder George Conway, both of whom have — despite being lifelong Republicans — denounced Trump as an unprecedented threat to the United States.
“This is not a partisan issue. Some Republicans understand Trump’s menace well and are outspoken,” they continued, proceeding to list examples of his “menacing” behavior.
They described Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “unmitigated failure,” noting that the president has been downplaying the severity of the outbreak since the beginning. In recent weeks, they noted, he has claimed America is “rounding the turn” on the pandemic and insisted a vaccine is just around the corner.
The commander-in-chief has pushed governors to reopen their states as the number of COVID-19 cases surged, refused to embrace social distancing and mask-wearing and ignored advice from health officials in his own administration, they wrote. The experts also pointed out the virus has devastated the economy, causing record unemployment.
Blotcky, Reiss and Norrholm wrote about Trump’s immigration policy, his attacks on the free press and his apparent attempts to force Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice to protect him from investigations.
The mental health experts also argued the commander-in-chief has “invited” Russian meddling in American elections and crafted his administration’s foreign policy “based on what will benefit him personally or politically.”
“Donald Trump is incapable of being a leader. He cannot govern. He does not give a damn about the American people. All he cares about is his self-aggrandizement and his self-preservation.”
“Trump’s being an existential threat to humanity is not a diagnosis, it’s a demonstrable fact,” the trio concluded.
Prominent public figures have issued similar warnings. In a recent interview with Salon, the renowned linguist and philosopher, Noam Chomsky, described Trump and his allies as “sociopaths,” arguing that four more years of the current administration would threaten the very survival of the planet.
