Trump suffers from 'toxic positivity' and 'cannot process' any information that makes him feel bad: CNN's Harwood

CNN's John Harwood on Monday suggested that President Donald Trump is in denial about the massive COVID-19 death toll in the United States because he is unable to accept information that reflects negatively on him.

In breaking down the president's already-infamous interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Harwood said that many of Trump's remarks seemed tailor-made to reinforce the psychological analysis of him done by his niece, Mary Trump, in her recent bestselling book.

"One of the things that Mary Trump... raised was what she called 'toxic positivity,' that is to say the compulsion to view things as going well in any setting, to protect your ego and your image," Harwood explained. "The president gave abundant evidence in that interview with Chris Wallace that he is psychologically incapable of accepting the gravity of this situation."

Even after more than 140,000 Americans have died from the novel coronavirus, Harwood noted that Trump's first instinct when asked about it is to brush off the pandemic.

"The president -- when he was challenged by Chris Wallace, who said we have this Johns Hopkins shows we have the seventh highest mortality rate -- he says no, we have the lowest mortality rate," Harwood said. "He cannot process and synthesize bad news."

Watch the video below.