Highly respected mental health professionals have broken their silence.
"Too much is at stake."
By Kerry Eleveld:
Trump’s unhinged display underscored a letter published in the New York Times Tuesday and signed by 35 physicians and mental health professionals who broke with long-held ethics standards to address Trump's "grave emotional instability." They wrote:
Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists). In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president. The letter’s lead signatories were Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Joseph Schachter, former chair of the Committee on Research Proposals for the International Psychoanalytic Association. They noted that they finally broke their "self-imposed" silence because it had "resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time." We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.
As I have noted before, public discussion of Trump's mental health has been mostly taboo, but the dam is beginning to break."
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Trump's mental instability was horribly on display when he called on a journalist whom he hoped would ask him a "friendly, easy" question. An orthodox Jewish journalist, Jake Turx, from a small publication, Ami Magazine, rose and stated at the start that he appreciates that Mr. Trump has a Jewish son-in-law, daughter, and grandchildren, and that he knows Trump is not anti-Semitic.
The journalist then spoke about his and other Jewish leaders' concerns about the rise in anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish temples and other places, and asked Trump if he could speak about this.
Trump obviously did not listen to what the young journalist said because he became visibly angered, rudely told him to sit down, "be quiet!" then raged about how he was "the least anti-Semitic person" and "least racist person," and that the question was "unfair."
Like all those who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, Trump made the question about himself, became defensive, and humiliated the poor journalist in front of everyone in the room and in the viewing audience.
It was a sickening display of Trump's vicious temperament and his inability to control his emotions, even though Turx started the question by flattering Trump.
How would Trump deal with a foreign leader he misunderstood? Do we really want to wait around to see what will happen?