Mental health professionals argue Trump's mind is grounds for impeachment


A panel of mental health experts who spoke in Washington Monday agreed President Trump's "mental health may be a threat to the United States," Politico reports. The panel was convened by Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer — founder of Need to Impeach, a group that calls for Trump's impeachment — and participants were predictably sympathetic to Steyer's cause.
Of particular concern to the panelists was Trump's authority to launch nuclear weapons. "[T]he entire military chain of command are all held to the highest degree of emotional and psychological stability except one man, the president of the United States, the very person who has his finger on a nuclear button," said panelist Steven Buser, a former Air Force physician.
The speakers also considered the 25th Amendment, a possible but improbable avenue to removing Trump from office without impeachment. The amendment provides that if the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," the vice president can be tasked with assuming the presidency.
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And they discussed the Goldwater Rule, an American Psychiatric Association prohibition on diagnosing public figures from afar. "When you see the rise of an autocrat," argued panelist and psychologist John D. Gartner, "silence is a sin, Goldwater be damned." Watch the full panel here.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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