Dr. Bandy Lee saw it coming – the violence foretold in Donald Trump’s election. While millions of Americans were still trying to figure out if Trump was just a crude playboy and fast-talking con man she felt a duty to warn the country about dangerous possibilities stemming from a man who lacked the mental fitness to be president. For almost 20 years she had been trying to understand violence. It was her calling. After earning medical and divinity degrees while studying at Yale and Harvard, and a stint at Massachusetts General Hospital, she joined Yale’s faculty to teach in both the school of medicine and the law school. In her clinical practice, she treated inmates in maximum security prisons. And in time she began applying psychiatric concepts to public health and safety. When Trump emerged as a political candidate, everything she had learned from her career in mental health seemed to converge. She began corresponding with kindred spirits and colleagues about how best to make their voices heard. She would become the catalyst of their collaboration, and the editor of the book they produced, titled THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP. It appeared just months after Trump’s inauguration and became an instant bestseller, dubbed by The Washington Post as “the most courageous book of the year.” But not without a price. Bandy Lee and colleagues had broken ranks to speak the truth, had stirred the hornet’s nest, and the hornets came after them in swarms. Now, Bandy Lee has published another book – PROFILE OF A NATION: TRUMP’S MIND, AMERICA’S SOUL.

Bill Moyers recorded this interview with Dr. Lee on January 14, 2021. It has been edited for clarity.