Sunday, during a segment on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”, psychiatrist Allen Frances MD told host Brian Stelter that President Trump “may be responsible for many more million deaths” than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.
CNN was debating the merits of having psychiatrists come out with possible mental health diagnoses on President Trump, but Frances, a former chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Duke University, said it was an insult to the mentally ill to compare them to Trump.
“Well, I think ‘medicalizing’ politics has three very dire consequences. The first is that it stigmatizes the mentally ill. I’ve known thousands of patients, almost all of them have been well-behaved, well-mannered good people. Trump is none of these. Lumping that is a terrible insult to the mentally ill, and they have enough problems and stigma as it is,” Allen Frances said.
“The second issue is that calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we’re crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist,” Frances claimed. “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.” [Emphasized]
According to the Washington Examiner, between the three dictators Frances used as examples, Chairman Mao Zedong killed the most people, up to 45 million, through his policies during his “Great Leap Forward.”
Under Joseph Stalin, who led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until his death in 1953, around 20 million people died in labor camps, forced collectivization that resulted in famines, and executions in his many purges. The Holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime killed around 11 million people, as per Washington Examiner. (Continued Below)
After the segment and asked why he didn’t fact-check Frances right then and there, Brian Stelter responded on Twitter to claim that he did not stop him because he did not hear the comment due to “tech difficulties.”
Stelter said, “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.”
Frances also took to Twitter to defend his comments he made about President Trump and blamed him for “world climate”: “Terrible damage Trump is doing to world climate at this global warming tipping point may be irreversible/could kill hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades. Many of them our children & grandchildren & their children. This is an existential crisis for humanity.” (Video Below)
Watch:
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
Terrible damage Trump is doing to world climate at this global warming tipping point may be irreversable/could kill hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades.
Many of them our children & grandchildren & their children.
This is an existential crisis for humanity. https://t.co/Ca6M5rgE0n
— Allen Frances (@AllenFrancesMD) August 25, 2019
