How did the United States Come to Back a Vicious Dictator against All Its Allies?
Dr. Bandy X. Lee
The disintegration of Donald Trump’s mind—now obvious for everyone to see—is metaphorical of the disintegration of our society. Unfitness means that there is no one in charge of the government; there is no one home. Rather, the appearance of someone being home makes him a prime target for nefarious forces to do their mischief.
I warned in The
Psychology of Trump Contagion, published before the 2024 presidential
election:
Sometimes the greatest threat to national security is
someone who can be leveraged and compromised—so as to parrot our enemies’
propaganda, to destroy American democracy from within, and to assist their rise
in global dominance.
One of these enemies is Vladimir Putin. Russian forces
launched 704 total missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight on December 5
to 6, 2025, heavily targeting railway and energy infrastructure in this proxy
U.S.-Russia war. The goal is to freeze our fellow pro-democracy Europeans, so
as to force them into submission as winter approaches.
So, how did the U.S. come to aid and comfort a hostile
opponent bent on reestablishing the Soviet Union? Astute political
commentator Thom
Hartmann makes a critical observation from the Epstein emails:
The child victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes are
apparently not the only ones who’ve paid the price for Donald Trump’s long
relationship with that notorious pedophile.
Epstein’s “partying” with Trump has apparently also led to
thousands of civilian deaths abroad, the collapse of America’s credibility
around the world, and a serious threat to the future of democracy in Europe….
In Epstein’s emails, he boasts of offering to advise
Russia’s senior-most officials about how to manipulate Trump: “I think you
might suggest to putin that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] lavrov can
get insight on [Trump by] talking to me…”
Consider Trump’s secretive and beta-submissive behavior
toward Vladimir Putin, especially in Helsinki when he trashed our intelligence
agencies and sucked up to Putin, and more recently with his red carpet in
Alaska, and it’s impossible to ignore what this newest Epstein revelation
implies.
If Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is a direct or indirect
result of things Trump did with Epstein, it’s naked treachery. Consider the
pattern:… the Russian military targets … are not accidents of war. They’re the
deliberate targeting of civilians, children, doctors, classrooms, apartment
buildings, homes, and hospitals….
And all of this—the horror of what’s happening in plain
sight that’s the clear result of Trump’s repeated and pathetic kowtowing to
Putin—appears, from the Epstein emails, that it may be getting so much worse
over the past 10 months because Putin took Epstein’s advice and threatened
Donald Trump with exposure.
We still don’t know what was said in that room in Helsinki
because Trump covered it up, making sure we’d never know. He ordered his
American interpreter to move away from his private conversation with Putin, and
afterward seized and destroyed her notes.
Similarly and more recently, in Alaska, Trump dismissed his
aides and rode with Putin privately in his car where they engaged in another
lengthy, secretive conversation.
That’s the behavior of a man with something to hide,
who’s terrified by some horrible secret….
On top of that, Trump has been placing private phone calls to Putin repeatedly ever since he was reinstalled in the Oval Office….
When we place Trump’s bizarre, unprecedented secrecy next to
Epstein’s emails in which the billionaire pedophile tells European and Russian
contacts that he could offer “insight” into Trump, the outlines of a deeply
troubling possibility emerge….
And the Russians, as the world knows, never, ever let
such juicy material go to waste. Former KGB senior intelligence officer
Vladimir Putin is a man trained to find the soft spot in any opponent and apply
the exact right pressure to make them bend to his will, and it’s looking more
every day like that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Trump was “best friends” with Epstein for more than a
decade. They lived near each other in both New York and Palm Beach, and partied
publicly together. They traveled on Epstein’s jet repeatedly. They allegedly
shared women.
These don’t prove blackmail, but the possibility that
Epstein passed along compromising details to Lavrov or even Putin is
staggering….
Even former Harvard President Larry Summers [wrote] to
his friend Jeffrey Epstein on July 16, 2018, moments after the Helsinki
meeting: “Do the Russians have stuff on Trump? Today was appalling
even by his standards.”
Epstein replied to Summers the next day: “My email is full
with similar comments. wow. Im sure his view is that it went super well. he
thinks he has charmed his adversary. Admittedly he has no idea of the
symbolism. He has no idea of most things”….
If … Putin delivered even the hint of a threat and Trump
immediately bent over and bowed down and has ever since, it would explain
Trump’s world-changing behavior and why he’s so seriously damaged the interests
of America while abandoning our European allies.
Is there anything else that could possibly explain why
Trump has spent years refusing to confront Putin for anything, no matter how
shocking or monstrous the Russian dictator’s behavior?
It would also explain his silence in the face of Russian
assassinations, Putin’s bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, and now
the horrific nightly devastation of Ukraine and Putin‘s kidnapping of tens of
thousands of Ukrainian children.
If … Putin used Epstein’s information as a weapon, then
the cost of Trump’s fear of exposure has been measured in thousands of
Ukrainian civilian deaths, including far more children then even Epstein
himself victimized….
It’s measured in America’s humiliation on the world stage
and in the bone-deep terror felt across Europe as Putin tests the resolve of
NATO and his officials explicitly threaten the Baltics.
The sheer scale of harm that could have flowed from this one
corrupt, degenerate, perverted man’s desperation to protect himself is
absolutely breathtaking.
If it turns out that this is what actually happened, it
would make historic betrayals like Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, Robert
Hanssen, and even the petty treacheries that toppled ancient republics look
small by comparison….
Because Trump’s so frequently surrendered America’s,
Ukraine’s, and NATO’s best interests to Putin’ s desires—and now we learn
Epstein offered to advise Putin on how to blackmail (or at last control)
him—[the] American people deserve to know whether blackmail, intimidation, and
Trump’s personal vulnerability have cost thousands of Ukrainian lives and
shaken the foundations of Western democracy. As well as ignoring—or
participating in—the destruction of the lives of hundreds of young girls.
Often these behaviors, with a similar underlying psychology,
go hand in hand.
(Hartmann’s full article is here: https://hartmannreport.com/p/did-epsteins-knowledge-of-trump-become.)
Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership that has been recently expanded, in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada (with notable articles in Dutch, Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Slovakian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Persian, Hindi, and Korean). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum for public education on “One World or None.”
