Solution is credited to username DavidPike from the Esri community.

TlDr: Set GCS to WGS84. That's it. No PCS. Then you can enter the data as decimal degrees.

Long version: I was over-specifying when I specified a PCS. As DavidPike pointed out, ArcMAP then interpreted the inputs as cartesian coordinates. My SHAPE@XY was then overwriting the coordinates with what I specified it to be so it LOOKED like the coordinates were correct in the attribute table. However, if the point was examined the decimal degree coordinates were actually close to zero. Solution was to just specify the GCS.

If a PCS must be specified, than an alternative solution would be to convert the decimal degrees into the appropriate cartesian coordinates of whatever PCS you choose. This should be done in Python prior to inputting into ArcMAP so that you are inputting cartesian coordinates.

Much appreciated again DavidPike!!