The Chauncey DeVega Show: A Conversation with Dr. Justin Frank About How Donald Trump's Mental Pathologies are Encouraging A Plague of Right-wing Violence and Hatred Across America

Dr. Justin Frank is a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and a physician with more than 40 years of experience in psychoanalysis. He is the author of the bestselling books Bush on the Couch and Obama on the Couch. His newest book is Trump on the Couch. Dr. Frank's work has appeared in Time magazine and the Daily Beast and he has appeared as an expert commentator and guest on MSNBC, CNN, PBS and other outlets.

Dr. Frank explains how Donald Trump's many mental pathologies give permission for the violence, hatred and terrorism of his supporters and why the massacres in El Paso and Dayton -- and his reactions to them -- reveal Trump's lack of empathy for other human beings and how the president is likely a sociopath. Dr. Frank also warns that Donald Trump hates to see happy families and this is why he does not care about seeing nonwhite children and their families suffering in his concentration camps. Dr. Frank also sounds the alarm about how the right-wing terrorism and other political violence that Trump has encouraged and commanded through stochastic terrorism and scripted violence will spread across the country like an epidemic.

Chauncey DeVega is angry that after only three years of so-called "resistance" that too many people have already surrendered to Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their fascist regime. Why? Because they are "tired" and "frustrated". This is because of a lack of historical perspective and understanding about what true struggle looks like in America and around the world. Chauncey also shares several news stories and commentaries about Donald Trump's post El Paso and Dayton "victory" tour of human depravity including a raid by ICE brownshirts which stole hundreds of Latino and Hispanic parents away from their crying children on the first day of school.

At the end of this week's podcast Chauncey reads a wonderful animal friends story about an honored elder who adopted an amazing senior cat.

SELECTED LINKS OF INTEREST FOR THIS EPISODE OF THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW  

• Trump used words like 'invasion' and 'killer' to discuss immigrants at rallies 500 times: USA TODAY analysis
• Their first day of school turned into a nightmare after record immigration raids
• Trump’s El Paso Photo Is Obscene
• This Is What Latinos Think Everyone Got Wrong About El Paso
• EXCLUSIVE: Dayton Shooter Was in a “Pornogrind” Band
• WTF Is Pornogrind? – Rolling Stone
• Elderly adopter shows senior cat how life gets better with age

The Truth Report: My Conversation with Tim Wise About White Rage and Donald Trump's "Race War" in America

Tim Wise is one of America's and the world's leading experts on white privilege and racism. He is the author of numerous books including his most recent Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America.

Tim Wise explains why three years into Trump's presidency there are still so many journalists, reporters and other political observers who are "shocked" and "surprised" by his blatant racism and authoritarian behavior. Is Republican strategist Rick Wilson correct in his assessment that Donald Trump wants a "race war" in America? And in what ways isthe recent mass shooting in California by an apparent Nazi -- as well as a very large increase in right-wing political violence more generally in America -- the expected outcome of Donald Trump's presidency?

A Conversation with MSNBC's Joy-Ann Reid About How Donald Trump Represents Everything Wrong With America

Joy-Ann Reid is the host of AM Joy on MSNBC. She is the author of several books including Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divide as well as We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama. Her new book is The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story.

Reid explains how Donald Trump has betrayed American democracy, why his violence, racism and other vile behavior is appealing to his supporters, and how he is the human embodiment of America's cultural and social ills.

Joy-Ann Reid also reflects on how best to make sense of this confusing and disorienting moment in American history and a Republican Party and Donald Trump which are committed to restoring American Apartheid and total white rule over an increasingly diverse country.

On this week's show Chauncey DeVega ponders why so many journalists, reporters, and the American people as a whole, are still surprised by Donald Trump's racism and his newest exercise in presidential white supremacy -- the slurring of four nonwhite Democratic congresswomen (most notably Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) as somehow being inherently "un-American" and who should be kicked out of the United States if they do not bow in fealty to Trump's racial authoritarian regime.

Chauncey also shares several news items which highlight Trump's war on America's multiracial democracy and his campaign of cruelty against nonwhites and then asks you, the listeners, to connect the dots.

"Two years ago I compared Trump to Hitler. People didn't believe me": Dr. John Gartner Explains How Donald Trump's Poor Mental Health is Grounds for Impeachment

Dr. John Gartner is a former professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Gartner is also the founder of the Duty to Warn PAC, an organization working to raise awareness about the danger to the United States and the world posed by Donald Trump.

He was a contributor to the 2017 bestselling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Gartner along with two other expert mental health professionals, is the author of the recent and widely-read USA Today op-ed "President Donald Trump's poor mental health is grounds for impeachment".

Dr. Gartner explains why there is no mass resistance to Donald Trump's movement and his assault on American democracy and freedom. He also answers the following questions.

Why have so many Americans chosen to surrender? How can psychology help to explain Donald Trump and his movement's assault on reality and why so many Americans have been seduced by this malignant reality? How has the Mueller Report empowered Donald Trump and fueled his apparent public mental illness and other dangerous behavior? What must be done to force Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party to impeach Donald Trump? Will there be violence from Trump's supporters if he is forced to leave office?

Political Scientist Ashley Jardina Explains How "White Identity Politics" Are a Dire Threat to American Democracy

Today's Republican Party is the largest, most powerful and most dangerous white racist organization in the United States -- if not the world. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is its leader. These are plain if not understated facts. No embellishment is needed. The examples are many. Over the last few days Donald Trump has repeatedly dug into his bucket of racist political scatology, saying on Twitter and elsewhere that four nonwhite members of Congress ("Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen," as he mockingly put it) should leave America and go back to their own "crime infested" and "totally broken" countries.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib were all born in the United States. Rep. Ilhan Omar is a naturalized citizen who was born in Somalia. This is not the first time that Donald Trump has said such vile things, which are almost word-for-word white supremacist or white nationalist talking points about how being a "real American" means one must first and foremost be "white" — and that nonwhites should be removed from the United States if they do not submit to white rule and authority.

Trump's racism is part of a much larger pattern of white supremacist behavior by his administration: Interning nonwhite migrants and immigrants in concentration camps, seeking to ban Muslims from entering the United States, suggesting that black athletes who oppose police brutality are traitors, changing the country's immigration laws with the aim of maintaining a white majority, and disenfranchising nonwhite people through gerrymandering, voter suppression, voter intimidation and other tactics, legal and otherwise.

Republican elected officials almost unanimously support Trump's racist agenda. To wit: only four Republicans voted "yes" in support of Tuesday's House resolution condemning Donald Trump's gross and obvious racism.

Senior Republican leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Sen. Mitt Romney have either stated support for Trump's racist comments or avoided answering questions about them.

Trump's White House spokespeople and the right-wing media have of course enthusiastically supported Donald Trump's most recent example of public white supremacy. Public opinion polls show that support for Donald Trump has grown among Republican voters because of his racist attacks.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party's racist agenda is in service to white identity politics and a foundational assumption that white people should always and forever be the most privileged and dominant group in the United States. But what are the specific contours of white identity politics, and why has it been so politically effective and personally seductive for Trump, the Republican Party and their voters? Is white identity politics an existential threat to America's multiracial democracy? What does it mean to be "white" in post-civil rights America? Are white men and white women invested in white identity in the same way?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Ashley Jardina, a professor of political science at Duke University and author of the new book "White Identity Politics."

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Donald Trump is America's Racist-in-Chief: Why is Anyone Surprised By His Vile Attacks on Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley?

Donald Trump dug deeper than ever into his bucket of political scatology this weekend. On Sunday, in tweets already made infamous, he proclaimed:

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

This is another version of "America: Love it or leave it!" It's troglodyte patriotism, low and unseemly coming from a drunk on a barstool, and nearly impossible to believe coming from the president of the United States.

Trump's "Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen" are no mystery. He means Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, all freshmen elected last year. Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx. Pressley was born in Cincinnati. Tlaib was born in Detroit.

Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia and came to America as a refugee in 1995. Unlike those Americans who hit the geographic and genetic lottery by being born in the United States, she chose to become an American citizen in the year 2000, at 17 years old. Her patriotism and loyalty to America are proven by her choice to be a public servant and by the policy goals she has pursued.This kind of "Love it or leave it!" patriotism has always been infused with white supremacy. Such language has have routinely been directed towards nonwhites and others — especially liberals, progressives and socialists — who want to make the United States a better country. Those who throw these rhetorical bombs imagine the nation as one being a "real American" is synonymous with being white and Christian.

Trump's comments are not surprising or shocking. Throughout his public life, Trump has shown himself to be a racist and a bigot.

Journalist Jonathan M. Katz summarized this perfectly on Twitter, writing on Sunday: "Donald Trump was an authoritarian white supremacist with fascist tendencies in 2015, and every single public figure and publication that did not make that clear from the moment he announced is complicit in the #ICEraid, the concentration camps, and everything happening today."

For all of the talk about how the Democrats are obsessed with "identity politics" in reality it is Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their supporters who wield it like a whipsaw against multiracial democracy and black and brown people.

The only riddle — and it is not much of one — is why so many members of the chattering class remain in denial about who and what Donald Trump really is.

The answer lies in white racial innocence: the presumption that to be "white" is to be inherently benign in one's intent and behavior, and in the outcomes which generally result. Donald Trump is the country's most prominent beneficiary of that type of white privilege.

There remains, even now, a fear and reluctance among the mainstream news media to describe Donald Trump as a racist or a white supremacist. Instead his bigotry is treated as a puzzle or the source of indecipherable questions. We can't know what is in his heart. Trump is often said to "misspeak" or to "make inaccurate statements."

Human Rights Attorney Hope Frye Explains the Evils She Witnessed Inside of Trump's Concentration Camps

Hope Frye is a human rights attorney who has been defending the human dignity and civil rights of migrants, refugees and other groups of vulnerable people for 40 years. Hope became involved  when she chaired the Board of Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law and now leads teams of lawyers and doctors into ORR, ICE and CBP detention facilities to monitor compliance with the landmark 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement governing the treatment of unaccompanied migrant and refugee children.

The Flores decision has governed the care of these children until Trump's vile regime circumvented that agreement.

Most recently she has lead teams to McAllen, Texas, Homestead, Florida, and several facilities in the Rio Grande Valley. She is the attorney who discovered the premature newborn and recovering young mother at an overcrowded processing facility in McAllen, Texas last month.

Hope Frye explains how Donald Trump's regime is violating American and international law in its treatment of migrants and refugees and why the culture of the Border Patrol and ICE encourages cruelty towards non-white immigrants, refugees, and migrants. Frye also shares her experiences documenting the horrible conditions inside of Trump's concentration camps and what it was like to discover a young mother and her premature baby who were suffering at the hands of Trump's Border Patrol enforcers.

During this week's podcast Chauncey explains why Donald Trump's authoritarian right-wing July 4th "celebration" was a carnival of white supremacy where Trump's MAGAite faithful eagerly waited for his special love juice and other sacred fluids. Chauncey also "connects the dots" between Trump's vile July 4th event and how the Republican Party is a dangerous revanchist destructive organization on a global scale.

And at the end of this week's show Chauncey reflects on America's moral reckoning and the poem "The Hound of Heaven" by Francis Thompson.

Eve Ensler on Righteous Anger, Forgiveness and Her New Book "The Apology"

Eve Ensler is an author, Tony Award-winner, playwright and activist. Her award-winning play The Vagina Monologues ran for more than 10 years and has been performed in more than 140 countries. Ensler's new book The Apology is a meditation on the decades of sexual abuse and other violence she endured from her father and on how she finally purged his power over her life through creative confrontation and forgiveness. 

Ensler reflects on the rise of Donald Trump and America's moral crisis, privilege and responsibility, healthy masculinity, why only certain groups in America are forced to forgive the transgressions against them, and how women who dare to publicly speak out against rapists and abusers are often made to suffer more trauma. 

Ensler also explains the power of righteous anger, her own choice to forgive her abusive father, and what she gained and sacrificed through the process of writing The Apology.

During this week's podcast Chauncey explains how the culture of violence among Trump's Border Patrol and ICE enforcers is much greater and bigger than a few "bad apples" and the ways that Michael Pence's "inspection tour" of his boss's concentration camps is an example of human evil across history. 

Chauncey also cautions people that the act of brave resistance by a freedom fighter in Tacoma, Washington who engaged in direct action against one of the Trump's regime's concentration camps on Saturday will be used to make the regime's Border Patrol and other foot soldier hooligans into "the real victims". 

And on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show our intrepid host shares some movie reviews and also a wonderful animal friend story.

A Global Emergency: Psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee Explains How the Mueller Report Shows that Donald Trump is Mentally Unfit to be President of the United States

Dr. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist and a leading expert on violence at the Yale School of Medicine. She is also the editor of the New York Times bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

In response to the Mueller report Dr. Lee convened a panel consisting of some of the country's and world's leading mental health experts. Acting in the interest of public health and safety their goal was to determine Donald Trump's mental fitness based on the information contained in the near-exhaustive and comprehensive Mueller report.

Their conclusion: Trump is mentally unfit, a threat to the United States and the world, and as such should have his powers severely restricted.

And it is fundraising month to support The Chauncey DeVega Show and now The Truth Report. I do not advertise on The Chauncey DeVega Show. Both of these podcasts take a great amount of time to produce each week. If you would like to help The Chauncey DeVega Show stay afloat and grow please show some love via Paypal which can be found over on the right sidebar.

Many people listen to my podcast each week because of the amazing guests I have been lucky to speak with there in our shared effort to help the American people and the world understand and survive Trump's malignant reality.

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A Conversation with Author Ben Fountain About How American Democracy is Broken and Donald Trump and His Supporters are Burning It All Down

Ben Fountain is the author of the novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Fountain traveled across the country during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign in an effort to document that political and social disaster as it took place in real time. The result is his most recent book Beautiful Country Burn Again. 

Fountain explains the deep and burning rage in America from a lack of hope and limited dreams which in turn helped to spawn Trumpism, why Trump's deplorables love him so, and how America's democracy went so wrong. Fountain also highlights how the Democratic Party shares no small amount of responsibility for Trump's reactionary movement because they succumbed to neoliberalism and abandoned American workers to the gangster capitalists.

On this week's show Chauncey DeVega says what must be said about (now private citizen) Robert Mueller: he is a coward and not a hero. Chauncey also warns the public that Trump and his personal bodyguard and human shield William Barr are and will be collecting receipts against their enemies such as journalists and reporters who dare to tell the truth about this regime.

On this week's show Chauncey DeVega says what must be said about (now private citizen) Robert Mueller: he is a coward and not a hero. Chauncey also warns the public that Trump and his personal bodyguard and human shield William Barr are and will be collecting receipts against their enemies such as journalists and reporters who dare to tell the truth about this regime.