President Donald Trump launched a Twitter storm on Saturday to defend his mental stability and fitness for office in the wake of questions raised by senior White House officials in Michael Wolff’s explosive new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”
“Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” Trump wrote.
“I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star …to President of the United States (on my first try),” he wrote, neglecting to mention his short-lived bid for the presidential nomination of the Reform Party in 2000. “I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”
The president did not directly reference Wolff or his book, but said, “the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.”
Still, Wolff’s book — which quotes dozens of current and former senior Trump White House officials — seems to have triggered the president’s latest Twitter fusillade. The publisher, Henry Holt, moved up the book’s release to Friday despite the president’s lawyer sending a cease-and-desist letter seeking to block its publication altogether.
In an interview with “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie on Friday, Wolff said “100 percent of the people around [Trump]” have questioned the president’s intelligence and fitness for office.
According to Wolff’s interviews with dozens of people who have worked in the Trump White House, Wolff said senior officials say he’s a “moron, an idiot. Actually, there’s a competition to sort of get to the bottom line here of who this man is. Let’s remember, this man does not read, does not listen. So he’s like a pinball just shooting off the sides.”
“They all say he is like a child,” he added. “He has a need for immediate gratification. It’s all about him.”
Trump is scheduled to have a physical examination next week, but according to the New York Times, “those tests for presidents do not generally involve mental acuity.”
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In another Saturday tweet, Trump also blasted veteran ABC News reporter Brian Ross, who had been suspended for four months after a quickly recanted news report about Trump, former campaign adviser and short-term national security adviser Michael Flynn and the Russians.
On Friday, ABC News announced that Ross had been demoted to produce long-form documentaries rather than breaking news. “Should have been fired!” the president wrote.
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