It May Not Be Politically Correct to Talk About It, But Is Donald Trump Mentally Healthy?
by Bob Schwartz
Donald Trump says he saw something that nobody else did: people in Jersey City cheering as the Twin Towers fell on 9/11.
From the Washington Post:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says he saw people cheering the Sept. 11 attacks across the river in New Jersey — a claim officials strongly deny.
Trump first told the story Saturday at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, as he pressed the need for greater surveillance, including monitoring certain mosques, in the wake of the Paris attacks.
“I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering,” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama.
Trump repeated the assertion Sunday in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” as Stephanopoulos explained to Trump that police had refuted any such rumors at the time.
“It did happen. I saw it,” said Trump. “It was on television. I saw it.”
“There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down,” he said.
“I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it,” he added, “but there were people cheering as that building came down, as those buildings came down. And that tells you something.”
It comes down to two possibilities.
One is that Trump is just saying stuff and making up stuff for political benefit. Pretty outrageous stuff, but it’s been working for him so far. There have long been internet rumors to this effect, but every possible objective source—police, news media, even Republican politicians—deny it ever happened. But it is a rumor that is a definite winner among certain constituencies.
Or. There is something creepily genuine about Trump’s profession of belief in this. He saw it on television, he says, even though it was never on television. Which means that maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a problem. A psychological one. People do and say all kinds of things that cross all kinds of lines—ethical, moral, criminal—without having mental illness. On the other hand, it would not be that surprising for someone who has skated for so long on the edge of saying whatever is needed—very successfully and profitably—to cross a boundary to the place where things that never happened do appear to have happened. All evidence to the contrary.
Bob Schwartz 
The dude is not crackers. He’s calculating. Granted, he does dab on some eau de delusion before tv appearances, and he has a ridiculous ego that comes with his profession and lifestyle.
Did he really see it on TV? I will give him the benefit of the doubt for the following:
I watched an entire day of Fox news claiming Robert Downey Jr was found dead of an OD in his apartment. There was footage, interviews, the works. No one else in my circle ever saw it, and clearly Fox would deny it. As I suspect would Robert Downey Jr.
Some years later, Fox’s runner at the bottom of the screen talked about Paul Newman’s death for over an hour. Again, not dead. Not even slightly.
On 9/11 the TV ran all manner of crap because no one had a clue wtf. It’s possible he saw CNN’s Palestine footage, it’s possible Fox loaded footage of some other protest and called it NJ. They have proven to be slimy liars just like their slimy owner.
So I’ll give him a maybe to be fair; but I will support official statements to the contrary because had it actually happened in NJ as NY was burning, there would have been two massacres that day.
You don’t mess with NJ
As for Jersey, I split my young years between NY and NJ, and yeah, you don’t mess with us. Just ask Chris Christie.
As for Donald Trump and crackers, I spent a few minutes digging for possible diagnosis, and landed on narcissistic personality disorder, a clinical condition officially identified in 1968. You can look it up online. It does involve lying and other behaviors. But this from the Mayo Clinic really seems to fit:
If you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You often monopolize conversations. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior. You may feel a sense of entitlement — and when you don’t receive special treatment, you may become impatient or angry. You may insist on having “the best” of everything — for instance, the best car, athletic club or medical care.
At the same time, you have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation. To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior. Or you may feel depressed and moody because you fall short of perfection.
To be sure he’s an ego let loose; but in that he is true to who he’s always been. No surprise for a man in a larger than life business.
For a monent, I’d like to throw is another possibility:
It’s all for show.
He’s nor, nor was he ever in it to win it. He’s been a big HRC supporter in the past; any chance he’s emoting to exaggerate and the problems on the GOP side? The Don isn’t stupid. Is this a setup?
I’m really tired of having to be “politically correct” too. From now on I’m going to call Donald Trump a fascist neo-nazi and the Republicans the party of American Racism and Xenophobia. Too hell with political correctness!!
The irony is that Trump has smashed through political correctness to appeal to supporters, while others in the conversation try to keep it civil by holding back on extreme characterizations — even if the descriptions fit perfectly. The media holds back too, trying to avoid charges of bias and imbalance, while most other Republican hopefuls also equivocate, hoping that they might pick up the Trump folks later on. All in all, an ugly scene. It’s the price of democracy, and like all bad plays, the hope is that better actors with a better script take the stage.
Think of the Weimar Replublic and Baron Paul von Hindenburg in the 1930s, and how Hitler ultimately made them all irrelevant or dead.