A U.S. District judge this week ruled against Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee who lost her position after calling President Trump “delusional” and mentally ill.
The Hartford Courant reports Judge Sarah A.L. Merriman dismissed Lee’s lawsuit which alleged Yale violated her first amendment rights solely because she warned the public about what she called the “contagion” of Trump’s mental instability.
According to the New York Post, Lee had held an unpaid position at the university for 17 years when Yale decided not to reappoint her for what it considered her questionable judgment for her comments about the then president.
Lee first became concerned about the Trump’s mental state while watching news coverage of a Trump rally in Iowa. She had been in a hospital room with her terminally ill mother back in 2016 at the time, reported Mother Jones.
“He said something about how his supporters should knock the crap out of hecklers,” she recalled to Mother Jones, “and that if they did, he would pay their legal bills.”
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The then candidate’s behavior reminded her of the violent inmates she treated in numerous prisons.
“Trump was engaging in the predatory manipulation of his vulnerable followers,” she concluded.
Lee organized a professional conference based on her fears and subsequently published a best selling book made up of papers from mental health professionals entitled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
The American Psychiatric Association publicly attacked Lee saying she violated guidelines for issuing a professional opinion about someone she had not personally examined.
In making its decision not to reappoint Lee, the chair of Yale’s Psychiatry department said “I want to emphasize that you did not make these statements as a layperson offering a political judgment; you made them explicitly in your professional capacity as a psychiatrist and on the basis of your psychiatric knowledge and judgment. “For that reason, the committee decided it was appropriate to consider how these statements reflected your ability to teach trainees,” said Dr. John Krystal in a 2020 letter, reported the Hartford Courant.
Lee asserted it was her duty to speak out.
“Trump’s presidency represented an emergency which not only allowed, but required, psychiatrists in the United States to sound the alarms,” Lee’s legal team said of her “professional responsibility to protect society.”
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This is an abominable verdict. Yale again shows its true institutional colors in not understanding the first thing about offering professional opinions re public figures – especially as a duty to warn. No doubt there were some big money donors behind the putsch. I have written about this issue multiple times as well – this about the same comments from Trump in 2016 –
Donald Trump Should Be Charged With a Crime! | Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pacific-heart/201602/donald-trump-should-be-charged-crime
The only one not fit to be at Yale are the ones who fired her. It’s obvious they got paid or a major supporter of the MAGA crowd ..