CNN's Ana Navarro Says Trump May Have Dementia, Calls Him A Narcissist

CNN commentator and Republican strategist Anna Navarro took to Twitter on Tuesday to launch a scathing attack on President Donald Trump, after he attacked "fake media" during a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, for garbling his statement on the Charlottesville attacks.

Navarro, a harsh critic of the president, said on tweeted that Trump’s showed “narcissism in midst of tragedy."

In another tweet, she said the reason for such behavior by the president was maybe an ‘early-onset Dementia.”

CNN anchor Don Lemon on his show termed Trump “unhinged” after the Phoenix rally, saying his remarks were “a total eclipse of the facts.”

“He's unhinged, it's embarrassing and I don't mean for us, the media because he went after us, but for the country. This is who we elected president of the United States,” he said. “A man who is so petty that he has to go after people he deems to be his enemy, like an imaginary friend of a 6-year-old.”

Lemon then read out Navarro’s tweet saying Trump may have dementia and asked: "Some people have been saying that for months, but listen—we don't know if that—he has—has he showed that he's fit for office?" Maria Cardona , a Democratic strategist and guest on the show’s panel replied emphatically and said: “No.”

This is not the first time that people have said or speculated that the president may be suffering from dementia.

Earlier this month, California House Democrat Zoe Lofgren wondered whether Trump had dementia or if the “stress of office aggravated a mental illness crippling impulse control.” In a press release issued by her office, she asked: “Is the president mentally and emotionally stable?” and even demanded that Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet ask Trump to undergo a mental examination, and determine whether he’s capable of holding office.

Many mental health professionals have evaluated Trump’s health, and like Navarro, have concluded him to be narcissist. In a letter to the New York Times, Prof Allen Frances, a psychiatrist who has written about diagnostic criteria on narcissistic personality disorder, called Trump a “world-class narcissist.” He added, however, that Trump does not have a mental illness as he suffered no personal distress or impairment from his condition, which is a prerequisite for the diagnosis.

“Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them,” he wrote.

A blogger in his post suggested that Trump’s overuse of filler words such as, “like,” “very,” and “um,” is evidence of a growing dissonance. He quoted researchers who suggested characteristics of dementia, and implied that they applied to the president: Semantic impairment (using words that are overly simple), Acoustic impairment (like speaking slowly), Syntactic impairment (using less complex grammar) and Information impairment (not clearly identifying the primary aspects of a visual they were told to describe).

According to Mayo Clinic, of all the people who have Alzheimer's disease, a common form of dementia, about 5 percent develop symptoms before the age of 65 years.