MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell Tuesday raised the issue of Donald Trump's mental capacity to serve as president — saying that "somebody has got to do a psychological profile and figure out why he acts the way he acts."
"It's becoming more and more clear that the biggest disqualifying factor as Donald Trump as president is his mental health," O'Donnell said, noting that he has known the Republican nominee for a decade. "Donald Trump is unfit for the office of the presidency."
He said that his clearest indication was Trump's attacks this past weekend on the family of Humayun Khan, the Muslim Army captain who died in Iraq in 2004.
His father, Khizr Khan, lashed out at Trump's plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States last week at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Humayun Khan, of Bristow, Va., was killed by a car bomb. He was awarded the Purple Heart and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
"It was a sick thing to do — and there is plenty of reason to think that Donald Trump did it because he is sick, mentally ill," O'Donnell said. "No matter how many times Donald Trump called women dogs, most in the political media were never going to question his mental health — but the line he crossed over the weekend with the Khan family has finally directed the question of what's wrong with Donald Trump at the right target: his mental health."
O'Donnell's comments followed similar comments by "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough earlier Tuesday and Dr. Drew Pinsky on CNN the night before.
"I fielded calls all day yesterday from conservatives — from Republicans, from officials, from people that the media would call right-wing bloggers — and everybody was asking me about his mental health," Scarborough said on his program, Mediaite reports.
"It’s not like there was talking points shot out by the DNC or by anybody else," he added.
"Everybody was talking about his mental health yesterday, everybody was calling me saying: 'What’s happening to him? What is wrong with him?'"
Scarborough said he has known Trump for 20 years.
Pinsky told Don Lemon Monday night that while Trump did not fit the strict legal definition for insanity, he did show signs of several mental illnesses.
"There’s two definitions of sanity: one is legal definition, and that is somebody who is so out of it they don’t know the difference between right and wrong," Pinsky said, RawStory.com reports. "That is a very high standard for insanity — and very few people meet that standard.
"When you’re legally insane, you’re really not functioning," he added. "Clinically, medically, usually when we talk about insanity, we mean psychotic, hearing voices, hallucinations."
Pinsky noted, however, Trump's apparent narcissism.
"People want to label him with a narcissistic personality disorder — and that is a pretty tough, tough thing to do at a distance," he told Lemon.
"But let me just talk to you. Narcissism, generally, can be a good thing: If you’re a fighter pilot, we want you to be narcissist, not to have fear in extreme circumstances.
"Most political leaders have some degree of narcissism, what motivates them to go into these areas," Pinsky said. "We’ve done research on this — and it bears that out."
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