New York Times columnist Charles Blow worried about Donald Trump's mental health and what his paranoid ravings could do to undermine confidence in American democratic institutions -- or worse.
"Donald Trump has virtually stopped trying to win this election by any conventional metric and is instead stacking logs of grievance on the funeral pyre with the great anticipation of setting it ablaze if current polls turn out to be predictive," Blow wrote in a column published Monday.
He's concerned that a desperate Trump is feeding a "hostile fatalism" as he senses an electoral loss, and Blow is troubled by the Republican presidential nominee's reaction to a steady stream of bad news.
"It’s as if the man is on a mission to demonstrate to voters the staggering magnitude of his social vulgarity and emotional ineptitude," Blow wrote. "He has dispensed with all semblances of wanting to appear presidential and embraced what seems to be most natural to him: acting like a pig."
Trump has stoked unfounded fears that the election has been rigged against him and has threatened to sue the New York Times for reporting sex assault accusations made against him, and he's accused Hillary Clinton of taking performance-enhancing drugs before the debates.
"These are the ravings of a lunatic," Blow wrote.
"The coarseness of your character has been put on full display, and now the electorate has come to cash the check you wrote," he added. "Trump now looks like a madman from 'Mad Men,' a throwback to when his particular privileges had more perks and were considered less repugnant. He looks pathetic."
He said Trump had fundamentally altered American politics for the worse, and he said conservatives had only themselves to blame by undermining trust in government and Christian values.
"When you have a political party that takes as its mission to prevent government from working instead of to make government work, a party that conflates the ill effects of a changing economy with the changing complexion of the country and is still struck by fever over the election of President Obama, Trump is a natural, predictable endpoint," Blow wrote.
