Psychiatrist warns 'villainous' Trump is exhibiting signs of psychosis: 'An extremely disordered, sick individual'

Following a series of reports that indicate Donald Trump is living “in his own reality,” psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes on Wednesday warned the president is exhibiting signs of psychosis, calling him an “extremely incapable, disordered, sick individual.”

Dodes was speaking with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell regarding a deluge of bizarre claims reportedly being made by the president. The New York Times last week reported Trump has begun to express doubt that it was his voice on the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which the president can clearly be heard bragging about grabbing women by the genitals. Trump himself acknowledged and apologized for that tape last year. And on Tuesday, it was revealed Trump has resurrected false claims about Barack Obama’s nationality, once again suggesting his predecessor’s birth certificate is fake.

Discussing these and other jarring reports from the White House, Dodes said they present further examples of Trump “being close to psychosis when he is stressed. “

“When he goes back and denies reality, people have trouble understanding that,” Dodes said. “The simple explanation for it which people don't want to hear, he is not in control of himself. This is what we say when somebody is becoming psychotic or briefly psychotic. So all of his delusional ideas come up when he is stressed in some way and then he loses track of reality because it doesn't fit what he needs to believe.”

Dodes noted what’s problematic is that people believe it’s easy to differentiate psychotic people and healthy individuals. Unfortunately the world is more complicated, and people like Donald Trump are on the border and they slip into delusional thinking when stressed,” he explained.

Dodes called Trump’s deteriorating mental state “an extremely dangerous thing for anybody, especially somebody who has been so wantonly unconcerned about the welfare of others and willing to do anything to promote himself.”

“He is an enormous present danger to us from the standpoint of creating a nuclear war and even from the standpoint of doing what he can to destroy democracy as well as attacking ethnic groups the way he has done,” Dodes warned.

The psychiatrist later told O’Donnell that once people reach “he understanding that this is a very sick man, he is truly very sick,” his “delusional thoughts are not surprising.”

“Going forward, I would not be surprised by anything,” Dodes said. “If he would try to dissolve Constitution, that wouldn’t surprise me, fire the Supreme Court, wage nuclear war North Korea. These things might seem shocking, but they're consistent, he has always been consistent in this. Once you understand he is about him, and it's a very deeply disturbed issue. He has to protect himself from what he sees as an existential threat by denying the reality. Once you understand that, everything else follows, and it's extremely dangerous.”

Dodes argued Congress and Trump’s supporters are “kidding themselves” if they “think this is not an extremely incapable, disordered, sick individual.”

“The worst possible case for America to have somebody who is not grossly psychotic—which everyone would know and throw them out—but close enough with a veneer to get by,” Dodes said. “That’s Donald Trump.”

“He's villainous because of his sociopath and psychopathy, but with a tremendous veneer which he is extremely good at,” he concluded.

Watch below, via MSNBC: