Is Donald Trump mentally unstable?

Is Donald Trump mentally unstable?

Hint: The author thinks so.

Tribune Content Agency — August 4, 2016
His critics have used a lot of adjectives to describe Donald Trump: outrageous, flamboyant, pompous, thin-skinned, erratic, egocentric and paranoid, for starters.

But maybe it’s time to use another word: “crazy.” Not “crazy” as in wild and funny, but “crazy” as in mentally unstable. Given his bizarre behavior, it’s a question more and more people are asking these days.

One thing’s for sure, we know Trump’s a pathological liar. He lies with every breath. He lies so often about so many things he makes “Lyin’ Ted” look like a truth-teller. Look at his contradictory statements about Vladimir Putin.

Back in 2014, he bragged: “I was in Moscow recently and I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer.” Last November, he claimed he “got to know Putin very well because we were both on ’60 Minutes.'” But this week, he told reporters: “I never met Putin. I don’t know who Putin is.”

Which is it? Did Trump meet Putin or did he not? If he did, don’t you think he’d remember? And how could the Republican nominee for president not know who Vladimir Putin is?

We also know that Donald Trump can’t take criticism. He has a compulsive need to strike back at anybody who doesn’t lavish him with praise: banning from his rallies reporters who wrote critical stories and belittling Republican politicians who were slow to endorse him.

Trump couldn’t even tolerate criticism from speakers at the Democratic National Convention — who, it should have come as no surprise to him, were invited for that very purpose. In response to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Trump tweeted: “I was going to hit one guy in particular, a very little guy.”

And then there was his sick, ill-advised diatribe against Gold Star Mother Ghazala Khan and her husband Khizr, parents of Army Captain Humayun Khan, who heroically gave his life to save his fellow soldiers in Iraq in 2004. As powerful as Mr. Khan’s convention speech was, it would have been soon forgotten had Trump not kept it alive with five days of mean, personal, and ugly attacks. At some point, even he must have known he’d gone too far, but he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t help himself.

But when you add up all of Trump’s erratic behavior, there appears to be more to it than just an occasional offbeat moment. Might Donald Trump, in fact, be mentally unbalanced? Some experts have started to say so openly.

Physicians and radio talk show host Dr. Drew Pinsky told CNN’s Don Lemon that while Trump does not fit the strict legal definition of insanity, he does show signs of multiple mental illnesses. Writing on the website Big Think, New Yorker science and psychology writer Maria Konnikova suggested that Trump might actually suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD.

Dr. Robert Geffner, president of San Diego’s Institution on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, told me there were three forms of aberrant behavior psychologists look for: NPD, where people have a grandiose opinion of themselves; impulse control disorder, where people act and react strictly on impulse, with no control filters; and anti-social personality disorders, where people manipulate without blinking, say one thing one day and the opposite the next day, with no remorse, guilt, or empathy. When found together in one person and combined with bullying, the results, he said, could be “dangerous and frightening.”

Now, I’m no shrink. But if that doesn’t describe Donald Trump to a “T,” I don’t know what does. Need further proof? On August 3, the online magazine Jezebel compiled a list of every bonkers thing Trump did in the last 24 hours.

He continued insulting the Khan family, accused two fire marshals of playing politics by not cramming thousands of extra people into his rallies, called Hillary Clinton “the devil,” kicked a baby out of a campaign rally, joked about being gifted a Purple Heart medal, refused to endorse Paul Ryan and John McCain, and said if his daughter were sexually harassed, he’d just tell her to find a new job.

It makes you wonder how someone so unstable got this far. As for Trump’s mental health, or lack thereof, we may not know until it’s too late.

Isn’t it ironic? Candidates for the Secret Service must pass a strict psychological exam before being hired, yet there’s no such requirement for candidates for president. Whatever you do, don’t give Donald Trump that test. He’d flunk it.

(c) 2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Bill Press

Bill Press is host of a nationally-syndicated radio show, CNN political analyst and the author of a new book, "Buyer's Remorse," which is available in bookstores now. You can hear "The Bill Press Show" at his website: billpressshow.com. His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter at @bpshow.

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