Khizr Khan on being vilified by Trump: 'The far right feels that their voice has been heard' - Guardian

Khizr Khan on being vilified by Trump: 'The far right feels that their voice has been heard'

Jon Swaine

@jonswaine

Wednesday 21 December 2016 00.00 AEDT

As you look out from Khizr Khan’s home in Virginia, the Blue Ridge mountains sweep magnificently to one side. Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s idyllic estate, is a few miles in the other direction. And in between, still spiked into his neighbour Richard’s front lawn, is a plastic campaign sign that says “TRUMP”.

“Maybe he’s going to leave it up for the next four years,” says Khan, with a smile that turns into a sigh. Shaking his head, he takes a sip of tea and reaches for a small box of chocolates.

It is a month since the man who taunted Khan and his wife Ghazala following their headline-making appearance at the Democratic convention was elected to the world’s most powerful office, and reminders of Trump’s victory are everywhere.

But around the Khans’ living room, so too are mementos of having lived through much worse. Their late son Humayun stares down from one wall, handsome and steadfast in his army portrait. His posthumous Bronze Star and Purple Heart awards are nearby. Humayun, a captain who was killed defending his unit from a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004, would have turned 40 this year. “We miss him so very much,” says Khan.

Still, Khan is shaken by Trump’s win and a subsequent spike in hate crimes across the US. Muslim friends say their children are being bullied. A doctor from Long Island told him a new patient refused to be treated by her when he saw her headscarf. Hostility toward Muslims is more intense than at any time since Khan arrived in America in 1980, he says.

“The far right feels that their voice has been heard and they have a licence to commit these crimes,” he says. “I have seen the fear of immigrants heighten after turmoil in the past. But never to this degree.”

Khan has taken advice from the police about securing his home. He advises women in his family not to travel alone. He is furious at Trump for not doing more to help. “These are your people, who you have encouraged to commit these crimes,” he says. “You have a responsibility as a leader to end it.”

Rather than move to calm the anti-Muslim fervour, Trump has made one of its most prominent advocates his national security adviser. Mike Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general who described Islam as “a vicious cancer” and said “fear of Muslims is rational”, will help Trump direct US military policy. Suggesting that Flynn is “ill, mentally”, Khan is deeply concerned about the implications for foreign relations.

Not that the appointment should be surprising. Having dismissed Mexican migrants as rapists and criminals in his first campaign speech, Trump told voters rattled by terrorist attacks in California and Paris that he would ban all Muslims from entering the US. He later proposed barring only those from countries compromised by extremism.

Khan doesn’t expect Trump to actually implement the ban, nor a new “registry” of Muslims he also floated. These were more likely cynical ploys “to get votes from the simple-minded people that fell for it”, he says. But damage has still been done.

It was Trump’s announcement of the Muslim ban last year that led a reporter to call Khan, who was quoted hailing his son’s patriotism and sharply criticising Trump. “Muslims are American, Muslims are citizens,” he said. An aide to Hillary Clinton saw the article, and invited Khan to appear at July’s convention in Philadelphia. His six-minute speech, with Ghazala at his side, caused a sensation.

Khan holds up the US constitution at Democratic national convention.

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Khan holds up the US constitution at Democratic national convention. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

“You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” he told Trump, who avoided serving in Vietnam because of alleged bone spurs on his feet. Waving a miniature US constitution that he’d pulled from his jacket pocket, Khan asked Trump if he’d even read the document. “I will gladly lend you my copy,” he said, to thundering applause. Khan keeps a stack of the booklets on a table beneath Humayun’s portrait. Visitors struggle to leave without one.

Incapable of letting a slight go unanswered, Trump called Khan “very emotional” and suggested he didn’t allow Ghazala to speak because of their religion. He moaned on Twitter: “Mr Khan, who does not know me, viciously attacked me from the stage of the DNC and is now all over TV doing the same – Nice!”

Horrified Republicans disowned Trump. Khan said he had a “black soul”. The dispute was pencilled in as a chapter in the political obituary Trump seemed to be writing for himself.

Things turned out differently. As the results rolled in last month, the Khans were VIP guests at Clinton’s election night event in Manhattan, where Ghazala was treated as a rockstar by actual rockstars. “A lady comes to Mrs Khan and says: ‘Mrs Khan, can I take a picture with you?’,” he recalls. “She pulled the hood on her hoodie down … and it was Cher.” Katy Perry and Lady Gaga did the same, he said.

But then, “it all got quieter”. Tearful supporters, who had been dancing in the aisles, traipsed out of the hall as the outcome became clear.

Khan, 66 and on a break from work as a legal consultant, has tried to stay upbeat by stepping up a speaking tour that grew out of his convention appearance. He has been preaching tolerance and pluralism to schoolchildren across the US. “Never be disheartened,” he tells them.

The packed schedule has exhausted him. Sniffing and coughing, he visibly drains over the course of our two-hour conversation. He is posing for photographs with a team of Japanese journalists as I arrive; an evening function beckons after I leave.

But he is energised by encounters while traversing the country as a recognisable face. Sitting in the eighth row on a recent flight home from Ohio, he was approached by two men sitting in first class. They shook his hand and offered him their seats. “We voted for Trump, but we want to thank you,” they told him. He politely declined.

As we speak, Ghazala, 65, is busy with one of their four grandchildren, who are between eight months and five years old. She and Khan were born in Pakistan and met at university in Lahore. They came to the US after a spell in Dubai, and live in a smart but unflashy four-bedroom house on a tranquil bluff a few miles outside Charlottesville. They have two adult sons, who advised them against getting involved in politics.

Sinking slowly into his sofa, Khan says the volume of abusive emails he received following the convention has declined, but he still deals with a couple of racist messages each day. He won’t show the worst, saying he erases them. In one new arrival on his iPhone, though, a man named Scott Glover felt the need to gleefully remind Khan: “Trump won the election and you, Hillary and the rest of the deplorable libs lost.”

Rightwing websites including Breitbart News, run until recently by Trump’s top adviser, went after the Khans with undisguised venom following the convention. One spurious story, based on a 33-year-old essay Khan wrote, claimed he championed sharia law. Another accused him of taking money from the Clintons. It was actually another lawyer named Khan.

Such was the vitriol that Clinton, who knows a bit about brutal media coverage, asked him when they met at a rally in New Hampshire: “Oh my God, how are you putting up with all this?” He told her it was worth it, and she assured him: “You’re doing something good.” He has no regrets about entering the political warzone: “There comes a time when one has to take a stand.”

Khan at his son’s grave.

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Khan at his son’s grave. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

And much of the response has been cheering. Their dining room table is covered in fanmail from across the world. Letters addressed with only their names and Charlottesville now find their way to the house. Khan is particularly proud of one letter, which he pulls from an A4 brown envelope. “Mayor of London,” the header says.

“As Salaamu Alaikum,” meaning “peace be unto you”, the two-page handwritten letter from Sadiq Khan begins. Saying that he was “deeply moved” by the convention speech, London’s first Muslim mayor tells Khan it demonstrated the power of “diversity, tolerance and liberty”.

“These great American values are also Islamic values,” the mayor writes, “and your determination to live by these values has inspired many Londoners of all faiths and backgrounds.”

A bitter argument has broken out among Democrats since Clinton’s defeat about whether she spent too much time on these issues of identity and not enough appealing to struggling white males of the rust belt. Khan sides with those who dismiss this as a false dichotomy.

“I am biased,” he says, “but sometimes a moral stand has to be taken, and it’s worth the cost. I am glad that she spoke up. I believe in equal dignity. We all have equal rights regardless of our gender or our preferences.”

Nonetheless, Khan, a political independent who voted for both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, does think Hillary also failed to stress the dangers of Trump’s wild economic threats against China for the farmers and factory workers of the midwest.

“You will not be able to sell your soybeans if we have a trade war with China,” he says. “They will rot right here, and we will have the same people who voted Trump in standing outside the White House trying to throw him out.”

He makes the case better than Clinton did, but has no interest in running for office. He reveals Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s governor and a close ally of the Clintons, asked him to. “But it would limit me,” he says. “Just let me speak.” He is also, he notes, still not a Democrat.

It may be the tiredness talking, or the practised search for optimism of a parent who has lived through the worst possible grief. But Khan veers from despair about Trump’s election to predictions that maybe it won’t be as bad as it seems. “We just have to hang in there a little longer,” he says. “When he moves to Washington, things will surely be different.”

One thing he’s sure about, though, is “Trump needs to come off Twitter”. Khan stays away from social media, having seen its perils. In his legal career, Khan specialises in electronic evidence discovery. In one case he worked on, a driver involved in a deadly 2007 vehicle crash was told by his lawyer to erase a Facebook photo showing him holding a beer and wearing a T-shirt that read “I ♥ Hot Moms”. But the other side had already downloaded it. The lawyer is now serving a five-year suspension.

“Nobody is telling Trump the damage it can do,” says Khan. He does not, however, offer his services as a consultant to the president-elect.

At a loss for many more words of his own, Khan unfolds a printout he shows his student audiences. It is a quotation by Elie Wiesel, the writer and Auschwitz survivor, who died in July. It is what he believes.

“We must always take sides,” Wiesel said. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.”

'Is a Tweet policy?' State Department officials ponder - Reuters

By Arshad Mohammed | WASHINGTON

When is a tweet just a tweet?

A debate is percolating in the U.S. State Department, where diplomats measure their words with demitasse spoons, on how to handle Donald Trump's Twitter commentary if he continues to tweet after he becomes U.S. president on Jan. 20.

By tradition, anything the president says is regarded as U.S. policy and can be repeated to foreign officials without fear of contradiction, at least from the White House.

But Trump has questioned bedrock planks of U.S. policy, such as whether Taiwan is part of "one China" or whether Washington would defend NATO allies, causing consternation at home and abroad.

"I have never hesitated to take anything that POTUS said in speeches, press conferences, and other remarks as anything but policy," a midlevel diplomat who has served on four continents wrote Dec. 7 on an internal State Department discussion board, in reference to the President of the United States (POTUS).

"But what about tweets?" he asked.

"Given the president-elect's penchant for using (Twitter) in a much more spontaneous context than most other USG officials, how should FSOs regard those statements?" he added, referring to U.S. government (USG) foreign service officers (FSOs).

"In theory, we all should have a firm grasp of what is hyberbole (sic) and what is not, but in practice we should not be so sure. I for one am done making assumptions in this area for at least the next four years," the diplomat added.

He then appealed to the State Department's Bureau of Public Affairs to issue an ALDAC, or formal message to "All Diplomatic and Consular Posts," clarifying matters.

The post, titled "Is a Tweet policy?" on "The Sounding Board," a forum on the State Department's intranet, prompted thoughtful, though equally perplexed, comments.

Another official wrote that he was confident President Barack Obama's comments are to be taken "seriously and literally", Trump may want his tweets to be taken both "seriously and figuratively," he wrote.

"Assuming there is a strategy here, it would seem that it would be to create a sense of ambiguity around issues previously thought to be settled for the purpose of leveraging a better deal to advance USG interests," he added. "Miscommunication may be the very purpose of the President Elect's tweets."

A spokesman for the State Department said it would have no comment on how the next administration and president may use social media.

Obama has tweeted since 2015 from the account @POTUS.

Rather than suggesting specific policies, Obama used the handle to encourage Americans to vote, to cheerlead for Hillary Clinton, Trump's election opponent, and to remember the recently deceased, including writer Elie Wiesel and golfer Arnold Palmer.

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From his Twitter account, @realdonaldtrump, Trump has mocked Clinton as "Crooked Hillary," attacked a former Miss Universe and sniped at the parents of a Muslim American U.S. Army captain who died in Iraq after the soldier's father spoke against him.

On Nov. 27, he tweeted "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally" but provided no evidence for the claim, which electoral officials have denied. Trump lost the popular vote by close to three million votes.

The president-elect has not said definitively whether he will continue tweeting after Jan. 20. Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A third official said the entire government would need to deal with the issue to "limit the amount of miscommunication a specific POTUS tweet could engender."

"As the great Bette Davis line goes, 'Fasten your seatbelt, it's going to be a bumpy ride,'" he wrote.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed, additional reporting by Timothy Gardner, Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Obama says Democrats lost by not showing up - CNN

Obama says Democrats lost by not showing up
Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama faulted his party's campaign strategy in an interview airing Monday, arguing Democrats suffered stinging electoral losses in last month's vote because they failed to campaign in hard-hit rural areas.
Taking partial blame -- and withholding any direct criticism of Hillary Clinton -- Obama said candidates in the future should ignore at their own peril the places Democrats haven't traditionally performed well.
"You've got a situation where they're not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we're not showing up, if we're not in there making an argument, then we're going to lose," Obama told NPR. "And we can lose badly, and that's what happened in this election."
In the aftermath of November's election, some Democrats have accused Clinton of maintaining a relaxed campaign schedule, bypassing states like Wisconsin and Iowa where Obama won in 2012. Her wins were principally in urban areas and on the coasts, leaving the rust belt and the heartland mostly red.
Obama said Democrats hadn't made enough of an attempt to sway voters outside the nation's population centers. Persistent losses in statewide and local races only illustrate the party's structural conundrum, he said.
"There are clearly failures on our part to give people in rural areas or in exurban areas a sense day-to-day that we're fighting for them or connected to them," he told NPR's Steve Inskeep. "Part of the reason it's important to show up...is because it then builds trust and it gives you a better sense of how should you talk about issues in a way that feel salient and feel meaningful to people."
Obama campaigned exhaustively for Clinton in states like North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, travel that officials said was dictated by Clinton headquarters and not the White House. In the final stretch, Obama argued for making a stop in Iowa, a state where he campaigned actively during his own bids for office. But Clinton's team nixed the idea, dispatching him instead to battlegrounds they felt were more in play.
In the NPR interview, Obama said Democrats had "ceded too much territory" and took some blame for ignoring political strategy during his early days in office.
"More work would have needed to be done to just build up that structure," he said. "One of the big suggestions that I have for Democrats as I leave, and something that I have some ideas about is, how do we do more of that ground-up building?"
Obama said he would work with the party once he leaves office to develop those changes, offering advice and scouting talented young politicians to champion and promote.
In interviews and press conferences, Obama has now offered extensive thoughts on how Clinton lost in last month's election, suggesting a mix of electoral miscalculation, Russian meddling, and media mistreatment.
Trump knew that Russia was seeking to harm his opponent, Obama argued, though stopped short of accusing the Republican of colluding with Moscow.
"That the CIA is now assessing, which was it was done purposefully to tilt the election in the direction of a particular candidate, shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. And in fact isn't a surprise to anybody," Obama said. Later he clarified that US intelligence officials are still working to determine a definitive motive for Russian hackers.
He said in the interview that Clinton's policy and diplomatic experience was lost in a sensationalistic political environment -- fueled, he said, by information gleaned from Russian hacks.
"In that scrum, in that swirl, you know, Donald Trump and his celebrity and his ability to garner attention and obviously tap into a lot of the anxieties and fears that some voters have, I think, definitely made a difference," he said.
"If we don't, you know, do some hard reflection -- all of us -- on how that happens, then we're like a body that is already weakened and then becomes more vulnerable to foreign viruses, becomes more vulnerable to manipulation and demagoguery and that's something that I'm also going to be thinking a lot about in my afterlife, my post-presidency," he went on.

Why the Latest Yahoo Hack Is So Much Worse Than You Think - TIME Business

Why the Latest Yahoo Hack Is So Much Worse Than You Think

Posted: 15 Dec 2016 01:43 PM PST

Imagine you’re about to buy a restaurant. It’s a place that was hugely popular, but has since lost its luster. Your plan is to turn it around. Before you can close the deal, the business reveals not one, but two incidents that jeopardized its patrons’ safety. The inspectors show up, demanding more information. Meanwhile, news of the problem spreads like wildfire, which will make your renovation efforts even more challenging. 

That gives you an idea of the position Verizon executives find themselves in after Yahoo disclosed its second massive security breach in two months. The first affected 500 million accounts, then the largest corporate hack in history. The breach Yahoo announced this week involved 1 billion accounts. The incidents, while separate hacks, both took place two or three years ago yet were only disclosed recently.

Yahoo’s stock, which had been steadily trading above $40 a share since Verizon made a $4.8 billion offer to buy its online operations, plunged 6% Thursday as the news surrounding the latest hack grew increasingly dire. The White House said that the FBI is investigating the hack. That followed reports that its victims included more than 150,000 federal workers, including FBI, CIA, NSA employees and former diplomats. New York’s Attorney General said he would also look into the breach.

FindTheCompany | Graphiq

The news drew condemnation from officials in the U.S. and abroad. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia vowed to press Yahoo executives on “why its defenses have been so weak.” The head of a German cybersecurity agency slammed Yahoo as well, noting dryly, “There is an array of German email providers for whom security is not a foreign concept.”

The bitter pill for Verizon is that, at a time when data breaches are growing more common as well as more sophisticated, the Yahoo hack is not your typical cyberattack. Visit the site haveibeenpwned.com and you may find your email account among some of the big breaches in recent years: Target (110 million users), eBay (145 million), Adobe (152 million), LinkedIn (165 million), and MySpace (359 million).

But Yahoo’s multiple breaches are not only bigger, they’re taking years for the company to uncover, meaning more incidents could still surface. And they involve an Internet brand that was once a go-to site for news, content and email, meaning there’s plenty of sensitive data at stake. Yahoo has said that only 225 million of its accounts are actively used these days, but stolen data on passwords, birthdates and the personal questions used to verify identity remain vulnerable even for long-dormant accounts.

Yahoo offers a cautionary tale to companies that, facing a turnaround or pressure to keep costs down, opt to skimp on security budgets. Users may be accustomed to a single breach, provided the company improves security thereafter. But two massive breaches can drive even loyal users away, invite class-action lawsuits, and tarnish a brand. Verizon is potentially importing these hazards if it decides to go through with its Yahoo acquisition. 

“It’s a pretty bad time for Yahoo because it’s been in acquisition negotiations with Verizon,” Troy Hunt, the security researcher who set up haveibeenpwned.com, said in an interview on Australian TV. “Not only is this [breach] double the size, but to have it demonstrate a pattern of failures on the part of Yahoo, you have to think it’s going to have a pretty serious impact on them.”

Still, Wall Street analysts didn’t appear concerned that Verizon would scuttle the Yahoo deal. They largely feel that Yahoo’s advertising technology and properties like Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance remain a strong fit with Verizon’s AOL unit. After Yahoo’s first data breach in September, a Verizon executive said the merger still made sense. Rather than walking away from a deal it’s coveted for a while, Verizon is likely to lower the offering price (as it did in the wake of the first breach) and to protect Verizon from any legal fallout from the hacks. 

“At the end of the day, Verizon wants this property,” Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein said on CNBC. “They want to put it with AOL and invest in ad technology across both brands.”

With Ivanka Trump, the Role of First Daughter May Evolve - BBC News

With Ivanka Trump, the Role of First Daughter May Evolve

• By CATHERINE LUCEY, ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

DES MOINES, Iowa — Dec 17, 2016, 1:28 PM ETWith Ivanka Trump, the typically minor role of a first daughter could get a major makeover.

She was a key player in her father's winning campaign, and people are closely watching the next moves by President-elect Donald Trump's 35-year-old daughter.

She's attended her father's transition meetings with high-profile figures, including the Japanese prime minister and technology leaders, and has indicated her interest in working on policy issues such as child care.

The Trump Organization executive vice president also owns her own company that sells clothes and jewelry. While three of Donald Trump's adult children are viewed as close advisers, he often highlights Ivanka and has made clear that he'd love to have her with him when he moves into the White House.

It's not clear whether that would be in a formal position. But Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway suggested this past week that there may be an exception to anti-nepotism laws for Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who runs a real estate and construction business.

Previous first daughters have played a social role in the White House.

During Harry Truman's presidency, when his wife, Bess, was home in Missouri, their daughter Margaret would play hostess. But it would be "unprecedented" for Ivanka Trump to serve as a close adviser, said Katherine Jellison, who heads the history department at Ohio University.

"If there was ever a first daughter who played such a close advisory role to her dad, she really kept it under cover," Jellison said.

What we know so far about Ivanka Trump

THE BUSINESS

With the Trump family, everything comes back to the vast family business empire.

Ivanka Trump, one of Donald Trump's three children with his first wife, Ivana, is an executive vice president of the business along with brothers Donald Jr., 38, and Eric, 32. Just how the president-elect will handle his business interests remains unclear. Trump has said he will turn management over to his sons and executives.

Ivanka Trump has her own business to consider as well. She recently drew criticism after her company promoted a $10,800 bracelet she wore during a "60 Minutes" interview on CBS. The spokeswoman for the company later apologized.

Since then, Ivanka Trump has sought to put some distance between herself and her fashion business. A letter posted on her website said that she would separate her social media accounts from her company's.

But questions continue to come up. Earlier this month, a "Coffee with Ivanka Trump" was listed on a charity fundraising website. Offered by the Eric Trump Foundation, it was to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The auction — reported on by The New York Times — drew high bids, but also raised ethics questions.

The auction appeared to have been removed from the website Friday. Asked about the change, the Trump team provided a statement from Eric Trump: "The only people who lost are the children of St. Jude," he said.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Trump's team says no official decision has been made about Ivanka Trump's role, and she was not made available for an interview for this story.

But the president-elect has made his wishes known.

"I think we'll have to see how the laws read. I would love to be able to have them involved," Trump said on Fox News of Ivanka Trump and her husband.

Congress passed an anti-nepotism law in 1967 that prohibits the president from appointing a family member to work in an office or agency the president oversees. But Conway said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the law has "an exception if you want to work in the West Wing, because the president is able to appoint his own staff."

Still, Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said: "I don't believe that this statue exempts the White House." He said Conway's interpretation would be reasonable policy because it would bring family members under conflict of interest rules, but added "I'm just not convinced that's what the statute says."

POLICY PLATFORM

While much about Ivanka Trump's future role is murky, her policy interests are quite clear.

Throughout the campaign she highlighted her interest in issues like child care, pay equity and maternity leave. Her father mentioned those issues rarely.

Ivanka Trump met with a group of Republican congresswomen on these issues in September. Since the election, she has reached out to members of Congress to continue the conversation, according to Sarah Chamberlain, the president and CEO of Republican Main Street Partnership, who said she has not heard from the future first daughter.

Republican consultant Katie Packer, who opposed Donald Trump, said she was welcoming "the spotlight that Ivanka Trump is going to put on these issues." But Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director MomsRising, an advocacy group for women and families, said she was concerned that the president-elect's conservative Cabinet picks don't share those interests.

"Ivanka Trump is right that child care and paid family leave are national emergencies, but she was not elected to be president of the United States of America and her dad, who was, has taken the opposite approach," Rowe-Finkbeiner said.

WHITE HOUSE HOSTESS

Throughout the campaign, Ivanka Trump played a more prominent role than Trump's third wife, Melania, who has focused her attention on 10-year-old son Barron.

Donald Trump said last month that Melania and Barron Trump would not move from New York to the White House until the end of the school year. She could still come in for major events, but there is historical precedent for a daughter or sister to step in and shoulder some of the social responsibilities.

Since the election, Melania Trump has kept a low profile while Ivanka Trump has been a regular fixture at Trump Tower in New York. This past week she appeared in a photo with Kanye West.

On Twitter, follow Catherine Lucey at: http://twitter.com/catherine—lucey

Harvard professor says there are 'grave concerns' about Donald Trump's mental stability - Independent

Harvard professor says there are 'grave concerns' about Donald Trump's mental stability

'An apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality leads us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office'Three leading professors of psychiatry have written to Barack Obama to express their “grave concern” over Donald Trump’s mental stability.

In the letter addressed to the US president, doctors from Harvard Medical School and the University of California have urged him to order a “full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation” before the President-elect takes office in January.

The group said it could not speculate on a diagnosis, but Mr Trump’s “grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to criticism” led them to believe he was unfit for office.

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“Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally,” the letter signed by Judith Herman, Nanette Gartrell and Dee Mosbacher, and published by the Huffington Post, reads.

“Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability — including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality — lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office.”

In August, President Obama questioned Mr Trump's judgement and temperament and called him “unfit to serve as president.”

“I said so last week and he keeps on proving it. The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn’t appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia means that he’s woefully unprepared to do this job,” he said.

“There has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world because a lot of people depend on the White House getting stuff right.”

According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), there are nine criteria for “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” - with a diagnosis being offered if an individual has five or more of the listed qualities.

The APA summarise the condition as: “A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.”

This is not the first time mental health professionals have weighed in on Mr Trump’s suitability for office.

In June, Atlantic published a psychologist’s findings that Mr Trump suffered from "narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity".

Mr Trump's well-documented "no-holds-barred" approach to the US presidency has led many to question his diplomatic suitability.

Will Russia’s 'act of war' against US democracy bring Trump down?

The real-estate mogul regularly takes to Twitter to post provocative statements aimed at his rivals, often breaking with long-established foreign policy protocol.

On Saturday, he accused China of “stealing” in a tweet that caused an immediate backlash from Beijing.

Initially misspelling "unprecedented," Mr Trump tweeted: "China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act."

He later deleted and then reposted the tweet to correct the spelling.