This morning, Trump retweeted a fabricated video of himself hitting a golf ball, which flies through the air and hits Hillary Clinton in the back, knocking her to the floor as she boards an airplane. This is simply appalling. He is boasting of his domination of her, boasting of his violent impulses, projecting his wish to harm her physically. His supporters think it is funny. They would think it was funny if he literally punched Clinton in the face. This man is not normal. Perhaps other men have fantasies about striking women. Perhaps they actually strike women. But they are not the President of the United States. This man is utterly lacking in impulse control or dignity. He’s got no class.

Since the 1964 campaign, most mental health professionals have avoided making judgments about the mental capacity of politicians. This pronciple–not diagnosing someone you have not personally evaluated–is known as the “Goldwater Rule,” because so many professionals offered long distance diagnoses of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. Goldwater lost in a landslide to Lyndon B. Johnson.

Dr. Lance Dodes says that the Goldwater Rule is a violation of free speech and is obsolete. If, in fact, a psychiatrist had actually examined Donald Trump, he or she would not be permitted to speak because of ironclad rules about doctor-patient confidentiality.

There are two ways to judge a person’s mental health, he says: words and deeds.

In his opinion, Trump is a sociopath, a liar, and a malignant narcissist.

“Trump’s case of narcissism is particularly severe because he also is out of touch with reality whenever he becomes upset. When he says, “I had the largest crowd at an inauguration in history,” it does not matter that you can tell him that it is not true, he still insists on it. Well, that is very troublesome because what it means is that he needs to believe it. He is able to give up reality in exchange for his wished-for belief. Sometimes we call that a delusion. We have not used that word much with Donald Trump because that does get confused with people who think that they are Napoleon. But Trump has a fluid sense of reality, which is a sign of a very sick individual.

“Sociopathy itself is a sign of a very sick individual, someone with a lying, cheating and emotional disorder. The intersection of those two occurs in sociopathy. It is not just bad behavior that people have to lie and cheat the way he does, it is an incapacity to treat other people as full human beings. That is why his focus is on humiliating others to aggrandize himself, as he did in the Republican primaries when he was debating and calling people names. The same thing applies to Hispanic immigrants and separating the children from their parents. That is a very, very serious mental and emotional problem. Normal people have normal empathy. It is part of being a human being. Lying and cheating and humiliating others and grinding them into dust in order to triumph is not just bad behavior. It is a serious mental illness.”

When you recall how he belittled other candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, Dr. Dodes’ conclusion rings true.

An interesting interview. Worth reading in full.