OPINION:
A psychiatrist — and not just any psychiatrist, but rather a high-ranking former professor and chairman emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University — went on national CNN TV to tell host Brian Stelter that this president, this Donald J. Trump president, may very well be responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
He’s a busy guy, this Trump. What with all that running to and fro from Japan and North Carolina and G-7, racking up the body bags in the process.
Either that — or this psychiatrist, this Allen Frances psychiatrist, has been dipping into the psychotropic medicine cabinet a bit too frequently.
Yes, let’s go with that, with Option B. Because search online, and it’s very difficult to find any mention of the murder count for President Trump.
What is easy to find, however, are headlines like this, both from NYBooks.com, “Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?” and “Who Killed More: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao?” Or this: “Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution,” from Holocaust Encyclopedia. Or this, from HolocaustChild.org, “Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?”
So the natural question would be: Where is Frances getting his information?
This is what he said, on the recent “Reliable Sources” segment — an ironic title, if ever there was one: “Calling Trump crazy hides the fact that we’re crazy for having elected him and even crazier for allowing his crazy policies to persist. Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were. He needs to be contained, but he needs to be contained by attacking his policies, not his person.”
The context was a discussion about the feasibility and professional soundness of the psychology and psychiatry fields pronouncing Trump mentally unfit, long distance, without ever having actually analyzed him — without ever having even met with him.
France opposed that long-distance analysis — but guess why.
“[I]t stigmatizes the mentally ill,” he said. “Lumping the mentally ill with Trump is a terrible insult to the mentally ill and they have enough problems and stigmas as it is.”
Seriously, CNN: This is the guy to talk about Trump?
Just for the record — since Stelter failed to mention — historians generally number Hitler’s death count around 11 million; Stalin’s, about 20 million; and Mao’s, anywhere between 20 million and 45 million.
Let’s compare.
There was this headline from NBC in June: “24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration.”
And this, from Mother Jones, just a couple weeks ago: “Man Who Never Lived in Iraq Dies There After Trump Administration Deported Him.”
So what’s that, like 25?
My gosh, that’s a Weekend With the Clintons.
It’s bad enough there are actually people in America who are so uneducated as to draw comparisons between Trump and the world’s most murderous tyrants.
But it’s worse when members of the media just sit back and let the uneducated press forward their uneducated thoughts, absent challenge. Can we get an “oh that’s just stupid,” Brian Stelter? Stelter later said on Twitter he didn’t hear his guest’s comment. Right.
This is why Americans hate the press.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.