If you asked the average person to name the greatest mass killer of the 20th century, they’d probably say Adolph Hitler. They’d be wrong (it would be Mao Tse-tung), but a psychiatrist has gone way out on the loony limb to suggest that Donald Trump is worse than any of them.

Dr. Allen Frances, former chair of the Duke University psychiatry department, appeared on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” to make this claim:

“Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.”

Victims of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Stalin’s Holodomor, and Hitler’s Holocaust, unfortunately, are unavailable for comment.

But don’t call Trump “mentally ill,” says this psychiatrist. That tarnishes the reputation of all the harmless mentally ill people out there. Instead, Trump is “dangerous, because he’s a bad, evil con man.”

Hold on, I thought the term “evil” doesn’t square with science!  because evil infers Satan, and God, or all that other moral Christian stuff.

Never mind. The shrink was on a roll.

You probably noticed that CNN host Brian Stelter didn’t bother to challenge such an outlandish comment. But while others pushed back on Stelter — or as liberal Slate put it, “an uproar from conservative commentators” — he had a ready explanation.

It was “technical difficulties.” Yes, you heard me — the ol’ technical difficulties excuse.

“I agree that I should have interrupted after that line. I wish I had heard him say it, but I was distracted by tech difficulties (that’s why the show open didn’t look the way it normally does, I had two computers at the table, etc). Not hearing the comment is my fault.”

And if you believe that, may I interest you in this bridge? It’s in New York City — historic neighborhood and all.

But this is not Frances’s first Orange Man Evil rodeo. In fact, in 2017 — before Trump had even been in office for one year — the psychiatrist held an interview with MedPage Today, touting his book, Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump. He said stuff like this:

“So that when we confuse mental illness with bad behavior, we, first of all, insult the mentally ill, and secondly, we underestimate just how evil Trump is and how dangerous.”

Hmm, there’s that word “evil” again.

But Frances showed sympathy for Trump supporters, those poor deluded souls. Can you say patronizing?

“I think the main point here is that we have to have full respect for Trump supporters and we have to help them see where their self-interest lies in a sincere way, not just with symbolic demonstrations.”

And, of course, the best way to do that is to appear on CNN with the wild claim that the president they support is worse than Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Starvation during the Holodomor under Stalin, 1933/wikimedia commons/public domain.

But Frances later explained his reasoning on Twitter. No, no, you knuckle-dragging conservatives have it all wrong! Trump could kill millions more than the evil trio of the twentieth century because. . . climate change! 

“Terrible damage Trump is doing to world climate at this global warming tipping point may be irreversable/could kill hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades.”

Never mind that the brilliant psychiatrist spelled the word “irreversible” incorrectly. We’re too stupid to realize his genius. Silly us for taking this nut job literally.

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