On Morning Joe, in the wake of recent comments by Donald Trump including his criticism of the Gold Star Khan family, Joe Scarborough says that he has been contacted by Republicans, conservatives and what the media would call “right-wing bloggers” to inquire about Trump’s “mental health.” Scarborough says “everybody” is talking about it.

Scarborough went on to say “I’ve known him for a decade, never seen him act like this before. It’s unhinged, not the Donald Trump I’ve known for over a decade. I never have seen anything remotely resembling this type of behavior from a guy who I’ve known and liked and called a friend.”



Note: From its headline, you’ll get all you need to know about Eugene Robinson’s WaPo column to which Willie Geist referred: “Is Donald Trump Just Plain Crazy?

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, MSNBC analyst Eugene Robinson.

WILLIE GEIST: With a provocative new column.

JOE: His columns are always provocative. What’s provocative about this one?

WILLIE: Dr. Eugene Robinson has diagnosed the Republican nominee.

EUGENE ROBINSON: I didn’t diagnose. I just said there’s a problem there.

WILLIE: A clinical problem.

ROBINSON: I’m not making a clinical diagnosis, just an observation.

JOE: So Gene, I’m going to peruse this really quickly. Does it have to do with his mental well-being?

ROBINSON: Well, gee, you think good.

JOE: I will tell you why I ask you this. It’s pretty remarkable. I fielded calls all day yesterday from conservatives, from Republicans, from officials, from people that the media would call right-wing bloggers, from whatever you want to call it — my, that [camera] shot’s far away. Hey, hey out there, and everybody was asking me about his mental health. We had somebody on the set yesterday that had said, you know, back in 1964, psychiatrists had tried to analyze Barry Goldwater, and they swore after that they would never do it again, they would stay out of politics. But it was all everybody was talking about yesterday. It’s not like there was talking points that were shot out by the DNC or by anybody else.

Everybody was talking about his mental health yesterday. Everybody was calling me saying what’s happening to him? What is wrong with him? And so, the reason I say this is, it’s just like it exploded. And you’ve written this column about it. Everybody is asking me yesterday.

STEVE RATTNER: I had lunch yesterday with a friend who is not that politically involved and he said, somebody has to do a psychological profile of the guy and figure out why he acts the way he acts and is he really healthy.

JOE: You hate to say this, but at this point when you keep doing things that are going to hurt you, that are going to damage your cause, that seem so disconnected from reality and standard norms of human behavior, at some point, everybody keeps asking the same thing, I think most disturbingly is this schtick worked, the Republican primaries, which is really, really bad for my party.

Now you even have Republicans that are saying, again, privately, mentally, like have you ever seen him like this before? I answered no, I haven’t. I’ve known him for a decade, I’ve never seen him act like this before. It’s unhinged, it’s not the Donald Trump that I’ve known for over a decade. I never have seen anything remotely resembling this type of behavior from a guy who I’ve known and liked and called a friend.