Donald Trump: Racist Or Crazy? Experts Weigh In

As an increasingly growing number of both the electorate and politicians become concerned about the possibility of a President Trump, many have questioned not only his politics, but his potential racism and volatile temperament, as well.

But there is one subset of the electorate who are viewing a potential Trump presidency with more than just concern, and it’s not just racism they are worried about when it comes to Trump — it’s his actual mental health.

Psychologists have been “armchair diagnosing” Trump since it became apparent that he would have a bigger trajectory in the Republican primary after announcing last year. Cautious to remind the public that it is actually considered unethical to diagnose anyone without ever meeting that person face-to-face, psychologists and mental health experts have, nonetheless, spent time watching Trump, through his exhaustive media coverage, and have found very little comfort in anything they have seen.

Beginning his campaign with overt hostility against Hispanics by dismissing them as rapists and murderers, doubling down on his contemptuous language towards women, whom he refers to as “pigs,” through his treatment of Fox News host Megyn Kelly, openly mocking a disabled reporter, and, throughout it all, referring to himself as “the greatest” and “tremendous” have given the mental health community a lot to worry about when it comes to Trump.

Recently, after Trump clinched the Republican nomination and became the official standard-bearer for the Republican party, many expected Trump to soften some of his extreme stances and begin to pivot more to the middle in an attempt to capture more moderate voters. But Trump instead began openly and repeatedly questioning federal U.S. District Court judge Gonzalo Curiel for his Mexican heritage — which even Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called the “textbook definition” of racism — and insisted on doubling down on that, as well.

For mental health experts, these actions — both his overtly racist tone, as well as his inability to admit wrongdoing, apologize, and move on — are not just concerning, they are symptoms of a mental infirmity for which there is no cure.

Recently, Huffington Post published an article called Too Sick To Lead: The Lethal Personality Disorder Of Donald Trump. In it, author Richard North Patterson became yet another voice expressing concern over the fact that Donald Trump, a man who is a step away from the White House, has a specific personality disorder.

“There is only one organizing principle which makes sense of his [Trump’s] wildly oscillating utterance and behavior-the clinical definition of narcissistic personality order.

“The Mayo Clinic describes it as ‘a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others.’ This is bad enough in selecting a spouse or a friend. But when applied to a prospective president, the symptoms are disqualifying.”

This is not the first time the idea that Donald Trump, with his willingness to belittle anyone for anything, combined with his own over-inflated sense of self, may actually suffer from a personality disorder has been discussed. But now, as he is no longer simply one candidate in a field of 17, but is, in fact, the actual Republican nominee, more people are speaking out about Trump’s overt racism and his less-obvious personality disorder.

And, according to Patterson, it has never been more important for the media to begin to openly question Donald Trump’s mental fitness, as he is running for the highest office in the land.

“[…] There is nothing more ‘current’ or important than Donald Trump’s psychological fitness to be president. All the hyperventilation of the media — parsing his ‘positions’, pontificating on his ‘strategy’ and intuition– is a poisonous form of the ‘political correctness’ he otherwise deplores, normalizing the abnormal by shoehorning him into the usual analytic boxes. And what it yields is, in great part, rubbish.”

The major — and damning — highlights of narcissistic personality disorder were then condensed in what could be seen as an actual encapsulation of Donald Trump.

“An exaggerated sense of self-importance. An unwarranted belief in your own superiority. A preoccupation with fantasies of your own success, power and brilliance. A craving for constant admiration. A consuming sense of entitlement. An expectation of special favors and unquestioning compliance.

“A penchant for exploiting or disparaging others. A total inability to recognize the needs of anyone else. An incapacity to see those you meet as separate human beings. An unreasoning fury at people you perceive as thwarting your wishes or desires. A tendency to act on impulse. A superficial charm deployed to disguise a gift for manipulation.

“A need to always be right. A refusal to acknowledge error. An inability to tolerate criticism or critics. A compulsion to conform your ever-shifting sense of ‘reality’ to satisfy your inner requirements. A tendency to lie so frequently and routinely that objective truth loses all meaning.

“A belief that you are above the rules. An array of inconsistent statements and behaviors driven by your needs in the moment. An inability to assess the consequences of your actions in new or complex situations. In sum, a total incapacity to separate the world from your own psychodrama.”

It’s becoming nearly impossible not to recognize Donald Trump in the context of an actual mental disorder. And, another author insists that it’s time the media stops acting as if Trump’s potential mental health problems are a forbidden topic and instead, investigate and question the possibility head-on.

“Given the totally preposterous verbiage that spews forth from Trump daily—-again like the media being racist, criticizing with abusive language reporters and others that challenge him and call him to task; because they are of Mexican heritage, have Muslim blood in their lineage, even are female based on gender bias, judges cannot fairly and impartially decide cases involving Trump or his companies (3,500 at last count per a USA Today story recently); or even referring to an African American in a rally as ‘ “My” African American’ […] — it is about time the media disrobe Trump’s psyche and dissect his psychological condition — nothing is off limits if Trump wants to play hardball with everyone and everything as he has been doing.”

Is there a possibility that the Republican nominee is truly mentally unfit to hold the highest office in the land by reason of psychosis? Let us know what you think.

[Photo by John Moore/Getty Images News]