I saw this question today, “Why do Trump supporters not see what I see?” in Bandy Lee’s Substack newsletter. For years, many people I know and I have asked similar questions. I tried to answer this question in my book, The Trump Files: (My) Account of the Trump Administration’s Effect on American Democracy, Human Rights, Science, and Public Health.(Download a free pdf copy)

On Wednesday, Donald Trump was asked about the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a Republican voter at a Univision town hall. The voter was skeptical about what Trump had been saying throughout the campaign and asked him what his opinion was of January 6. After a rant, Trump said that January 6 was a “day of love.”

We should expect this type of answer. Trump has been obsessed with the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him by Biden and the Democrats. Of course, there is no evidence of that. Furthermore, there was no evidence of any form of election fraud that would affect the election outcome. However, we must see that the Big Lie claim is the nucleus of Trump’s 2024 campaign. The Big Lie has spread to his followers like a contagion. The voter indicated that he wouldn’t be voting for Trump.

Violence is a central concept in Trump’s political behavior, but people that I have direct contact with and who are supporters of Trump do not see that. They attend his rallies, and even after a meandering speech full of lies, threats, and falsehoods, they not only continue to support him but do so at a deeper level. They listen to his personal attacks on anyone in line of sight. Kamala Harris is in his line of sight.

Maga heads at a rally in LaTrobe, PA, heard him go off on the Vice-President after defaming those “far-left” Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He claimed that Kamala was even more far-left. :As you will see below when he used the word “shit,” the crowd of MAGA heads roared.

“So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough. That you just can’t take it anymore. ‘We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice president! The worst! You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’ve fired! Get the hell out of here, you’re fired! Get out of here. Get the hell out of here, Kamala!

Click on the video to hear Trump and watch the Bobble Heads in the background.

How did a massive population of Americans in the 21st Century become Trump cult members? And why don’t the Bobble Heads not see what I see? Read on, and you’ll find out.

There are millions of Americans who revile what Trump says. Some of these millions have devoted their lives to trying to understand people who embrace violence, aggression, denial of facts and evidence, and tyrants. Following are introductions to two of these people who’ve spent decades studying and warning us of people like Donald Trump.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is an American psychiatrist whose scholarly work included writing on violence and has contributed to prison reform around the U.S. and the world. She was a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School from 2003 through 2020. Of direct connection to this discussion about Trump is her unyielding work bringing together mental health experts to warn Americans about the mental health and instability of Trump.

She organized a conference at Yale in 2017 with a dozen psychiatrists, including Robert Jay Lifton. They explored their fear that Donald Trump’s mental state should be revealed as a way to warn America. Later in the year, she edited The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a collection of essays warning about the dangers of Trump’s mental instability. Three editions of the book were published, with the latest last week titled The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. I should also point out that Yale fired Dr. Lee because she breached the Goldwater Rule in a speech about Alan Dershowitz and Trump. Her appeals were rebuffed. However, this has not kept her from pursuing her work of warning us about Trump. Her idea of Trump contagion will follow.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton

Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars, political violence, and thought reform. Lifton has written over twenty books, including such seminal works as Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (winner of the National Book Award), The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), and, most recently, The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival and Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religous Zealotry.

He is co-founder, with Erik Erikson, of the Wellfleet Psychohistory Group, which met at his home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, for fifty years. Lifton served as an Air Force psychiatrist in Japan and Korea. He has taught at the Washington School of Psychiatry, Yale University, Harvard University, the City University of New York, and Columbia University. Lifton has written the introductions to each of Bandy X. Lee’s The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. His ideas about malignant normality will follow.

Malignant Normality

The concept of “malignant normality” is explicitly mentioned in the The Trump Files. ? Malignant normality refers to a term used by Dr. Robert Jay Lifton to describe a situation where society begins to perceive destructive and dangerous behaviors as normal. In the context of the last nine years, it is applied to Donald Trump and Trumpism, highlighting behaviors such as megalomania, willful ignorance, dishonesty, fraud, extensive lying, falsification, systemic corruption, attacks on critics, disregard of intelligence agencies, denial of climate change, support for dictators, and mistreatment of international allies.

And here we are in late October 2024, and this megalomaniac is on the ballot. He shouldn’t be, but here we are.

The concept of “malignant normality” emerged from Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s study of Nazi doctors. Malignant normality describes a phenomenon where destructive and dangerous behaviors become normalized and accepted within a society. Dr. Lifton’s research on the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence, particularly his study of Nazi doctors, led to the development of the idea of malignant normality. It highlights how individuals can become desensitized to harmful actions, viewing them as a regular part of everyday life.

Contagion

The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Humankind, a book written by Dr. Bandy X. Lee, is the result of years of study of violence, and her ground breaking book published in 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Lee warned Americans of the dangerousness of Trump, and her warning was supported by dozens of psychiatrists, health care specialists, and historians.

Trump contagion is an integration of shared psychosis, and narcissistic symbiosis, according to Lee. Trump and his followers need each other. She puts it this way: The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure.

The Trump rallies are a playground for these mental illnesses to play out. Using a language of “the other,” Trump involves his audience by bringing them into his thinking by casting the others with words like we, us, them. Trump has a need for millions. That is why he is seized by the size of rallies (and most everything else, e.g. ratings).

Lee explains that “When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals.”

Trump contagion is in full view, not only with his rallies and interviews, but in the ads that his campaign shows on T.V. and other media outlets.

According to Dr. Lee, Trump resorts to violence. She says that he has lost respect by being rejected by the nation (twice), and is now living through the possibility of losing again. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.

The audience, or we should call them the “Trump Cult” are people who need a parental figure. In related research by George Lakoff, Trump followers are like children in a “strict” father family. In this case the family is the Trump Cult, with Trump being “dear leader.”

Why do Trump’s Followers not see what I see?

They aren’t able to see anything other than what Trump tells them. They have caught the Trump contagion. The symptoms of this contagion mean that Trump followers have lost agency, independence, personality, and personhood. Because of the contagion they are now bound to be loyal to the leader. Trump’s crudeness, cruelty, hate, and propensity for violence become part of their psyche. It’s impossible to see your point of view.