IHIP News - Trump In Collapse After World Leaders Call Him 'Mentally Ill And Impaired" Publicly

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Jason Stanley joins us to discuss the damning results of the Iranian government's psychological experiments on Trump. Our listeners get the Flamingo Starter Set for just $7 at https://www.shopflamingo.com/IHIPPre-order Jennifer’s new book Not Today, Fascists today: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcastFollow Us:I've Had It Podcast: @IvehaditpodcastJennifer Welch: @mizzwelchSpecial Guest: Jason Stanley @Jason_Stanley_Anti_FascistSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Some stunning information regarding Trump's deal with Iran. This should be a top news story. Take a listen to this. Iranian side added senior psychologists to their negotiating team to review the communications that they were going to be sending to the mediators to give to Trump. And they did that because the Iranians believe that Trump is legitimately mentally ill and is operating in an impaired mental state. And they didn't say this is a joke.

They didn't say this with any lightness. They said, we recognize that we are dealing with a mentally incapacitated individual. And we've had senior psychologists work up a psychological profile of what they think is going on with Trump's brain. And so we started to cater our messages. All right. And joining me to discuss this is my good friend, Jason Stanley, here in studio. He is a philosopher and leading scholar of fascism. He is the author of several books, including Erasing History,

How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Jason, welcome. And what do you make of this American weakness on display? And you don't see this in mainstream media anywhere. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a kind of push in the mainstream media to represent what is clearly. not normal as normal. So there's this constant normalizing structure that we're seeing here in the United States now, this constant pretending that the debacle yesterday on the lawn of the White

House of the United States of America, this August building in which we house our presidents, you know, being sullied like this. We're all supposed to be pretending it's normal. And the New York times with this, this, you know, all these mainstream media outlets are all, you know, they all have to pretend that this is normal. Why they have to do this as an interesting question. Maybe it's itself a kind of mental illness. No question. And I mean, 15 years ago, if Barack Obama, if it was reported that one of our major adversaries said this guy's office rocker, and we need a psychiatrist in here to help us negotiate with him, it would be disqualifying. The news would apply a guardrail that would force Republican politicians and Democratic politicians alike to reckon with this. But instead,

it's just like you said, all of the samewashing, which speaking of the Iran deal, Benjamin Netanyahu has come out, basically, his government and said they're not going to honor it. Pop this up. Netanyahu told Trump the IDF will not, which are all from Lebanon. and that Israel does not consider itself bound by the Lebanon Clause in the U.S.-Iran agreement. And I just want to remind the viewer that Benjamin Netanyahu is charged with war crimes of starvation, carpet bombing civilian populations, et cetera. So the fact that there's still our ally, and this goes unreported as well, that our ally has said to the president, tough tittyes, we're going rogue.

You're not the big guy that you think you are. Yeah, I mean, Israel just dictates terms to the United States, and Trump is the most pro-Israel president the United States has ever had. He's done everything for the state of Israel. In fact, the Iran War was done for the purposes of the state of Israel. Israel, the Republicans, have been the party of Benjamin Netanyahu. They're essentially Benjamin Netanyahu's party in the United States, and they subsume U.S. national interest to Israeli national interests.

That's what the Republican Party stands for. That's their chief brand. There's a Saturday Live episode from 2011 about this, about like, we heard Chuck Hagel that you think that Israel and our interests are not 100% always aligned. So, yeah, the U.S. Republican Party is entirely beholden, not to specifically the far right in Israel. And so Netanyahu doesn't feel bound by anything they're doing. And as the New York Times reported, the Iran war was started because Netanyahu went into the situation room and took it over with the Mossad in the background on video and presented the case for the Iran war to Trump.

And that's something. And despite the fact that the United States is going to war with Israel fully as its partner, much of the main. mainstream media has been reporting that the war has been done on behalf of Saudi Arabia or Qatar or or or anyone but the person who is in the situation or Putin. Right, right. So, so, you know, so this is what we see, the U.S. Republican Party. Trump is here to represent the interests of the current government of the state of Israel. And that's what he does.

and it's not reported on much in the press. Now, I assume that's not, that's part, that's, I think my suspicion is that's because of Jared Kushner. I don't know this, but it's because of connections to money and autocracy globally. It's, you know, but whatever the reason, we are partnering fully with Israel, military is integrated with them in this attack on Iran. We got rid of the original nuclear deal with Iran, which was all what Trump is trying to get again. To the tune of $300 billion more dollars.

Yeah, exactly. All Netanyahu told him to shelve it. He shelved it, you know, in Trump won. Now we're just trying to get to where Obama had already gotten. So as this relates to your book, how fascists rewrite the past to control the future. Right now, these are two huge stories that I present. to you. Iran says this will be easy. All we have to do is hire a psychologist because this guy's brain is cooked. He's cuckoo for cocoa puffs. He's not well. So we can have a psychologist

manipulate him. There's been rumors that former KGB agent Vladimir Putin uses, deploys the same tactics. Well, we can also assume that Israel has done the same thing. And the file, I'm sure, is this thick, Jason. And it says pile on superficial flattery, tell him how great he is, how tough he is, how strong He is we asked every other president to do this and they said, no, but you're going to be the one that does it. He's like, you know, Trump's like, oh, yeah, I'll do it. The fact that the media is not appropriately reporting this story in tandem with this man's decline and with our adversaries manipulating him by using psychologists and psychiatrists to prey on his weakness. What does that say about our democracy and what does that say about what stage of fascism are we? we Jason, because that's the scariest question, and you're the expert on this.

Right. So I don't like the phrase our democracy, because even at the best of times, we have not had a healthy democracy. And now that we've eliminated the Voting Rights Act, return the United States back to the era of Jim Crow. We don't have it. We're not a democracy anymore because we're not going to have, you know, black citizens in the American South are not going to have political power for decades to come. So we're no longer, I think, even officially a democracy, I wouldn't say. But narrative control is central to fascism, to any kind of authoritarianism. We don't need debate about whether it's fascism or what flavor of authoritarianism it is. Narrative control. So, you know, my book Erasing History is about why they're attacking universities

and schools and the media as well in science. So we have a full attempt to take over narrative control. It's all one story here, Jennifer. It's all the attack on universities, the attack on science. Now they're taking over federal grants so that federal science grants have to be politically improved. Why is that? Because you can't have science being independent. Authoritarianism needs full narrative control. So you can't have any rogue people telling you, for instance, that some disease is coming and doing something that you don't want people to think it's doing. So you need full narrative control. So you need to pay attention as we slide further and further into authoritarianism to this takeover of narrative control. Now, we know Barry Weiss was put

in control of CBS. Who is Barry Weiss? Barry Weiss started out her career at Columbia, trying to target the Joseph Massoud, a professor there in his tenure. She was described herself as a a Zionist fanatic. So her number one issue is defending Israel. So she's now in charge of CBS. So she, we already know she's attacked 60 minutes. And they've already told us when Colbert was fired, they said, we're doing it for economic reasons. His show's not profitable. Well, 60 minutes was incredibly profitable. Why are they destroying 60 minutes? Well, it is nothing to do with profit. And David Ellison doesn't need money. He already has enough money. They are not taking over the media for money or for profit. As they're showing when they're taking down 60 minutes, they're taking down 60

minutes because it's dangerous. It's independent media. And notice the lying to us, the consistent lying to us. They always say the same thing. They say, oh, we'll keep the media independent. So now the Paramount merger, they're going to take over more networks and they've told us we're going to keep the media independent? Well, they've already taken down CBS. They've taken down 60 minutes. The most profitable show. They've taken it down for political reasons. So they've already shown us they're not going to keep the media independent. Now they're going to take over the more and more of the media. And so we're going to really need to rely on you, Jennifer, and other independent media organs like Ziteo or Mare Hassan Zateo or other democracy now. Other independent.

media organizations to tell us the truth because what they're setting up now. Obviously, Barry Weiss's primary thing is defending Israel, and Trump and the Republican Party are the most pro-Israel, you know, it's the most pro-Israel regime we've ever had. But there's other things here. There's the midterms. So why do they need such control so quickly? Well, they're clearly want to lock down the whole, as much of the media as possible, before the midterms. So that when they steal the midterms and when they say the vote was rigged or whatever, they have people not on Fox News this time, but on CBS and CNN saying, well, the administration says, dot, dot, dot.

So let me ask you this. if Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are the biggest supporters of Israel, they are also incredibly anti-Semitic. Like you see these young Republican chat groups that's just like Nazi stuff for, you know, for the sake of just being the cool, you know, waspy white guy. And the president of the United States wouldn't condemn these Nazi chats. And the president after Charlottesville. And so there seems to be this, it's, it's, it's, It's nuanced, this whole thing. But there seems to be this moment in history where I feel like on the left, people are seeing

Israel is committing war crimes. They are far right-wing authoritarian slash fascist government. We do not want to partner with them. They're killing too many kids. Starving people out. This is horrible. And on the right, is it support of Israel for the sake of the Jewish state or is it just about money? like developing Gaza or that what is that that conundrum and all of that?

Well, I think I think there are obviously personal ties between Trump and and between Trump and Trump's family and Kushner and Netanyahu. And those are, I believe that Netanyahu's and Kushners are have personal friendships. And that matters in politics. That's independent of identities. I think that there are, that, I think, I mean, there's a lot of lobbying happening on behalf of Israel, and they are taking advantage of that lobbying. I think that many American Jewish people, wealthy American Jewish people, have lost the plot.

We American Jews are under threat from anti-Semitism. Their anti-Semitism is a permanent thing. It is always going to be there. And what people like Jonathan Greenblatt have done is they've placed we American Jews in existential danger because they've partnered with the far right. So, you know, they said to the far right, we're going to ditch Jonathan Green Black and the ADL is like, we don't care about democracy. We don't care about free speech. We don't care about equal rights. All we care about is backing Netanyahu.

All we care about is backing the Israeli state's actions right now. We don't care about the safety of American Jews. We don't care about democracy. We don't care about free speech. But when you do that, you're going to empower anti-Semites. You're going to give, you're going to hand the ball to ultimately a far right that is not going to remember that you help them take democracy down. Right.

Right. Kind of like Pam Bondi learned. If you carry water for the patriarchy, you're going to be the first to drown. Exactly. And that's just, okay. The Trump, DOJ, like you said, had cleared the way for the Paramount merger. And as you see the Trump administration and these oligarchs, there seems to be not a distinct line of where government ends and where government begins. It seems to be very fused together right now.

It seems like all of these things are an extension of the white trash house. It's hard for me to call it the White House any longer after what I witnessed last night, Jason. But what happens to nations when you have the oligarchs and the state melding their powers like this? The fusing of the state and corporate interests. Yes. We have just one authoritarian structure here. So the job, what the autocrat is saying is he saying to the oligarchs, I'm going to give you all the taxpayers' money. like taxpayers' money is going to go to my family and your pocketbooks. All the government contracts are going to go to you, and then you're going to back me and my party and the machine behind me.

Because remember, this is not just Trump. This is a permanent push to end U.S. democracy. So this is not about Trump. This is a structure that if Trump is gone, is going to be still there. Vance is even more a tool of the oligarchs. He's a Peter Thule, uh, men. So Peter Thiel mentee, Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel.

Peter Thiel. He has a tool. Peter Thiel, so this fusion of oligarchical interests in the state has, it unifies autocracy because now, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Trump is a call using his, his, his cult following, uh, to hand their, to empower him and they're handing their futures and the futures of their children and grandchildren over. They're giving them to the oligarchar. All the state contracts are going to the oligarchs, right, and to Trump himself and Trump's family. And that's the deal. The oligarchs keep him in power, and he keeps them rich with the taxpayer money of the poor fools who, you know, are just what they get is that people on the coasts get upset when they see Trump is present. That's all they get. Then they get their taxpayer money taken away.

They get no future, they get inflation, and all the money of our country goes into the pockets of the owners of the surveillance state who are going to then micro-target us for to spend all of our money on their wares and micro-target us politically to keep us in permanent outrage. So we keep handing power to the autocrat who gives them, who gives them our money. The Republican Party's ability to get people working. working class Americans to vote against their own interest and their own values. They have been so incredibly successful at that.

I want to switch gears to Trump's announcement of his Fourth of July rally. And you tell me just how fascist authoritarian this is. Popped us up, Kylie. He posts, I call it lie social instead of true social. He posts on lie social. On July 4th at the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument in beautiful and safe Washington, D.C., we are going to host the most spectacular Trump rally of them all, a tribute to America. A celebration will honor the country's people, spirit, strength, resolved, and triumphs.

So this fusion here of a Trump rally with the birthday of America. So he does this fusion with the oligarchs. Is this what he does to keep the cult intact? Is this a handout to them? Like remember that we, you know, our country, this overt nationalism, our spirit, our strength, our resolve, and our triumphs. So this is a personalist regime. So it's a regime based that, and we might, after Trump is gone,

it's probably going to stay a fascist country, but it'll be less personalist. But we might still see these, Trump might still be like his image might still be on everything as the founder of the new regime. But Trump is saying America is Trump. And America is Trump. Trump. He won twice in free and fair elections. Americans voted for him. But he is making America

synonymous with Trump. 250th anniversary. What you're celebrating is Trump. Trump is America. And what that means is that your taxpayer money should go to the Trump family because they are, they are the owners. They are America. The richer they are, the richer America is. So this cannot be separated from the corruption. This is the most corrupt. I mean, to say it's the most corrupt regime in the history of the United States is a joke because it's one of the most corrupt regimes in human history. It's a pure corrupt. They profited billions and billions of dollars off the presidency. And you can only, but he has to justify that, right?

He has to give a reason why your money goes to him. So your money goes to him and his family because he is America. And so the richer he is, the richer America is. So Trump, thanks to the voting public of the United States, has ended the United States just is Trump. And, you know, Trump's family should be the richest family in the world or one of the richest families because that's just to say America is. That's just how every tin pot dictator does it in every Latin American country or Eastern European country, every tin pot dictator like, you know, in, you know, in, you. you know, in Kazakhstan or Turkmistan or whatever. That's just how they roll.

Everything is that dictator. So that's what we're seeing for the 250th anniversary. He is saying you are celebrating Trump. You are selling, it is a celebration of the unification of America with Trump. What America now represents is Trump and his wealth and gaudiness are just showing off like any Eastern European dictator's enormous castle. Yeah. I want to ask you, you said after Trump will still be a fascist country. And probably. I don't know. My heart kind of sank a little bit. And is it, is it that whenever people move the goalposts

and give an executive power, a new person that comes in rarely will cede that power back, is that is the Overton window just shifted that much for American politics? I don't think there's any rule. I think there has to be whatever, Whatever happens, the country has changed so much. We live, you know, I think they move too fast. They don't care about popular opinion. It's very clear. Trump has never tried to broaden his popular support, not for a second.

He's always said, if you didn't vote for me, you are the enemy, and we're going to punish you. J.D. Vance is going around accusing all the dumb blue states of fraud. That's the whole thing, the whole thing is. So they don't care about popular support. So it just follows logically, just use your reasoning power, that they think elections don't matter from now on because they're not trying to make elections. They're not trying to make a pitch for elections mattering. Now, I think they don't have elections locked down. I think there's still, they haven't completely taken over the courts. The oligarchs have taken over the Supreme Court. So Supreme Court is not necessarily fully pro-Trump. They're pro- oligarch. Yeah. So they're going to vote on behalf of the oligarchy and whatever autocratic mechanisms are. But I think there's just a ton of resistance.

And there's a lot of incompetence at. I mean, I'm glad there's incompetence. Oh, shit. That's what we're talking here. Yeah. So I think that they've moved too fast. They're acting like they've got elections nailed down forever. That elections won't matter anymore.

So I think they've done a sort of hail merit. to the future saying, okay, we will figure out how to make elections not matter. They're taking over the press now so that whatever pitch they make to steal the midterms, they're already stealing the midterms. They've handed the Voting Rights Act, returned us to Jim Crow. Dave, they've gerrymandering radically. The Supreme Court is just like, you know, like Virginia, whatever you want. Virginia can't gerrymandering in response like the red states can.

But they're really, they're taking over the media in this rush because they want, if the elections go badly for them, they want the media to broadcast their narrative, narrative control. So. Yeah. Okay. The Trump administration, this goes to the title of your book, Erasing History. They tried to erase a lot of stuff when he arrived. All right. I don't know about you guys, but I have grown so tired of shaving and the razors for women are never really that great.

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discussing topics like slavery and climate change. And this is somewhat hopeful. Obviously, if it got up to the Supreme Court, Jason, they would, you know, bend over immediately. But we see everyday American, and even right-wing appointees in the federal court holding the line here a little bit, which gives us all a glimmer of hope possibly about the midterms, because what we're seeing is record number of people registering as Democrats. And with a big, big move in the midterms, it would have to be too big to rig, obviously. There could be a guardrail here, which I talked to our friend, Ruth Ben-Giott, And she said, that's why he's so obsessed on his bunker because he associates that as like his safe place.

Obviously, he can't build it in time. But you've mentioned the Voting Rights Act being removed, dismantled. And we talk a lot about you hear online here, there's a rise in anti-Semitism, there's a rise in this. There is the biggest rise and the biggest threat in our democracy, I think, has been, and currently the biggest attacks are on our black population. Nobody is suffering at the hands of what he's doing as much as our black citizens are. And I am very concerned about how the V. Rights Act was just dismantled, just like Roe v. Wade was. And we're just kind of all moving on. And we just keep seeing this passivity, you know, in the population.

What's your take on all that? Yeah. So I think, so several different issues you raised. I think there's a big difference between Trump one judges and Trump two judges. I think the judges that were appointed in Trump's first term, while they are far right, are still, you know, within the bounds of sort of legalistic sanity, whereas the Trump two judges are not. And so any authoritarian is going to need to take over the courts. So they're doing a rush to take over the courts with just the sort of crazy out of the people who are just like, we are just here to impose

Christian nationalism and oligarchy. So I think it's a race there. So that's one issue. I think that, as you alluded to, we can still win. It's already an unfair election. They've already gerrymandered. You can win, you know, I mean, with Memphis, they cut Memphis into these districts so that, you know, 20% black population goes with a huge rural white congressional district to make their votes pointless.

So we already have an unfair election, but you can still win an unfair election, as my colleague, Lucan Way always points out. In a competitive authoritarian system, you can still win. You just have to win by 25, 30 points, what happened in Hungary. It has to be too big to rig. It has to be – you just have to have a massive victory. So we can still win this, and that is why everything is on the midterms. They're trying to lock down the media, so it's going to be heavy when, like, CBS is going to report whatever Trump tells them before. CBS, the job of CBS now is to be, like, the official objective Fox News.

So they're not going to be ranting there. They're going to be sounding all official and scientific, polite Fox News. Not calling for the, what did that one guy call for, that we just euthanize homeless people. Right, right. Right. So their job, Fox News is to continue to be Fox News. Then we're going to get a whole bunch of networks who are going to promote administration lies or sanewash, do everything from sanewashing to promoting the administration's lies and perspectives under the cover of objective journalism. So that just becomes a.

So, but we can still win this if we just do what Hungary did and win by a percentage that is just undeniable. We have to empower the youth. Last, when I spoke here to you about the Hungarian elections, I think I said something that I now disagree with. I said that, you know, okay, we have to, you know, we have to, you know, we might have to pick someone. more centrist to draw a broader town. I think we have to draw the youth in. That's what Hungary did. They drew a huge youth vote. We have to like energize the youth. So the way Mom Donnie's done here in New York. Precisely. So if we can if we can broaden that, if we can just get a huge vote, we can we can begin to repair the damage that has been done. But the damage, but whatever comes

next has to be just a different country. You know, if they win, it's going to be a different country. It's going to be a country founded by Trump, year one, and Trump's will be the God, and then all the success of the Trump family will come in and out of power, and it'll be like that. But if democracy wins, then we're going to have to redo things so this doesn't happen again. And that will mean addressing legacy of racism. Yep.

It will mean stop, you know, addressing things so that white grievance can't be weaponized. It will mean addressing things so that transphobia can't be weaponized. It will be addressing things so that people stop voting to destroy their children's futures. And I think we're going to have to address billionaires and now trillionaires. We're going to have to address the economic system that is rigged for mediocre white men to excel in an economy. And then the one, the most famous one, is an immigrant, Elon Musk, which I don't care about, but MAGA does, who gets a lot of government subsidies. And he is now a trillionaire, and he spends all of his time online, allegedly on ketamine, acting like he is a victim of very. racism and then he bashes the government. And I just want to remind everybody when Elon Musk and

Donald Trump broke up last year was this delicious Twitter fight they had. And Elon Musk said, well, Trump's not going to release Epstein files because he's in him. And then Trump came out with this banger, pop this up. Trump tweeted, and I'm going to get to the center of it, Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history by far. And without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop. And so I just want to remind everyone that this guy that complains about government has enriched himself so much who complains about immigrants is an immigrant, who it complains about him being a victim of racism while all he does is repost Holocaust deniers, all of this weird white supremacist, eugenist stuff. But this thing right here,

a trillionaire in the United States of America who had the keys to the government, the first three or four months, the keys to the treasury? That's all of our information. Yes. What do we do in incoming? Let's say it's too big to rig. Let's be positive for a second. It's too big to rig.

It's like Hungary. That kind of turnout. It's, I mean, flipping house and Senate seats everywhere. What kind of accountability to what he did with Doge and this sort of. wealth. How do we address that, Jason? Yeah, I don't think we know. I think this United States is done. Like, so what comes now is got to be something that we haven't really imagined yet. It's got to be, and I think it's possible for us to remake the country so that billionaires, tech fascists, that they get, that we get accountability or some accountability or their power

is reigned in. I think all of that is possible. It just has to be, a very different vision of the country. It has to be like a new country where we don't allow this kind of wealth inequality anymore. We don't allow this kind of crazy wealth and crazy poverty where the only thing you get, if you're not a billionaire, is you get, you know, to get happy that, you know, your billionaires are racist and can go on and on about their anti-black racism and transphobia. So, you know, and their victimhood, you know, there's nothing worse than the whining of billionaires. There's nothing worse than the whining of the privileged. It is just, and what we've It's nauseating. It's nauseating. What we've got now is the worst whiner snowflake time in history.

When all of these white men and wealthy people are just the biggest, all they want our respect and worship. They don't, I mean, Mark Andreessen said this. He said, we don't want to be wealthy. We want to be admired. We need to not give them our admiration. We need to be clear. This is the form, the best form of accountability. We need to be clear.

These are scoundrels. These are people with incredibly weak egos, damaged human beings, who are doing everything they can to gain our worship. And we should refuse to give us. them that. We should view them with the contempt they deserve. And maybe that's a good foundation for a new United States, a contemptuousness towards the billionaires who've robbed us for so many decades. I agree with everything you just said and I love it. And I want to tell our listener and viewer, you remember our friend Robin Dembraff, who is a good, good friend of Jason Stanley's here. And he is going to do a book talk with Robin today on their new book, Real Men on Top.

And we do have you guys. We do have educators, experts that are willing to be brave and come on independent media and share with us what we're up against. So Jason, thank you so, so much for joining me, my listeners and my viewers. Everybody loves it when I do my professor talk series. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you for like what you've come to mean for our country. Oh, thanks, Jason.