Dr. Howard Dean, a former Vermont governor and physician, asserted on Sunday that President Donald Trump has a mental illness that makes him unfit for the presidency.
As part of a panel discussion on MSNBC, host Alex Witt noted that Trump had effectively been isolated during Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) funeral because he was not invited to attend the event.
"Trump has been an outlier since he's been president and he's not a particularly well respected person," Dean explained. "He wasn't very well respected when he was in business in New York and he's not very well respected now."
"What you had was what I think was an extraordinary tribute to John McCain," Dean pointed out. "He basically rallied the decent people in this country, Republicans and Democrats, to make a statement about America being a decent country and not being represented by the president who is not a decent person."
"We've seen that before with the president not being there, tweeting," Witt observed. "He did it for First Lady Barbara Bush's funeral. Howard, is this him saying, this is working for me, this is the way I'm going to go about it?"
"I've long believed the president is mentally ill," Dean replied, "and I believe narcissism overcomes his ability to know, A, what's good for the country, and B, what's good for him."
"He's not going to change after 70-odd years," the former Vermont governor continued. "I don't see this as just Washington elite. I see this as a matter of a statement of decency about the whole country. It's not coincidence that Donald Trump is at the lowest percentage rating he's ever been at, which is 36 percent."
He added: "That means 70 or 64 percent of the people believe that this country is a good country regardless of whether they're Republicans or Democrats and believe we ought to move forward in a more decent direction and more thoughtful direction and think about each other. That was the core message of that funeral, which was, never mind if we're Democrats or Republicans, let's do what's right for the country."
