Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” psychiatrist Dr. Allen Frances said President Donald Trump “may be responsible for many more million deaths” than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.
Frances said, “I’ve known thousands of patients, almost all of them have been well-behaved well-mannered good people. Trump is none of these. Lumping the mentally ill with is a terrible insult and they have enough problems and stigma it is. Calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we’re crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist.”
He added, “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were. He needs to be contained but he needs to be contained by attacking his policies, not his person. It’s crazy for us to be destroying the climate our children will live in. It’s crazy to be giving tax cuts to the rich that will add trillions of dollars to the debt our children will have to pay. It’s crazy to be destroying our democracy by claiming that the press and the courts of the enemy of the people. We have to face these policies not Trump’s person. Now it’s absolutely impossible, you can bet the House, that the Congress, that Pence, that the cabinet will never ever remove Trump on grounds of mental unfitness. That will never happen. Discussing the issue in psychological name-calling terms distracts us from getting out to vote.”
Update: Stelter tweeted regret for not challenging the comments by claiming he did hear Frances.
I agree that I should have interrupted after that line. I wish I had heard him say it, but I was distracted by tech difficulties (that's why the show open didn't look the way it normally does, I had two computers at the table, etc). Not hearing the comment is my fault.
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 25, 2019
Story cited here.
