Bernie Sanders says Donald Trump is "not funny" — he's dangerous

Impact

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) isn’t sure whether the president of the United States knows when he is lying.

Opining about the state of U.S. politics in a speech hosted by the Los Angeles Times, Sanders candidly explained the casual relationship many politicians have with the truth.

"I am member of the United States Senate," Sanders said. "No senator, no politician I know, is scrupulous about telling the truth all the time. Whether they are progressives or conservatives, everybody stretches it a little bit to try to make your case or beat up on the other guy. This is politics as usual.

"But in Donald Trump," Sanders continued, "we have something that is very, very different."

"The truth is that Trump is a pathological liar," Sanders continued. "You’ve got a guy now of which one or two things is accurate: Either he knows that he is lying or, even more dangerously, he does not know that he is lying."

"You’ve got a guy now of which one or two things is accurate. Either he knows that he is lying or, even more dangerously, he does not know that he is lying."

After the crowd responded with laughter, Sanders interrupted them: "Not funny. I wish I could tell you it was funny, but it’s not."

Sanders went on to describe several of Trump’s lies as "delusional," implying Trump may not be of sound mind when he claims millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

The debate over speculation about Trump's mental health has received a lot of attention recently, after a prominent psychiatrist wrote a letter to the New York Times admonishing the paper for encouraging speculation about Trump’s mental state.

"Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely," Allen Frances wrote. "Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy."

It's unclear whether Sanders intended to question Trump’s mental health, but his skepticism seems to suggest he has serious doubts about whether the president of the United States is capable of separating truth from fiction.