U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to counter questions emerging in the media in recent days around his mental health.
“Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence…..” tweeted the president.
He added that throughout his life, his “two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
These tweets follow a week of turmoil in the White House after a provocative tell-all book on the inner workings of the Trump administration was released. The book detailed several revelations about White House officials, including former chief strategist Steve Bannon, communications director Hope Hicks, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, as well as others.
The book is entitled Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Author Michael Wolff claims to have spent over three hours with the president himself, which Trump promptly denied in an earlier tweet.
Questions about the Commander in Chief’s mental health began swirling after an excerpt from Wolff’s book claimed that White House employees were beginning to wonder whether Trump’s “mental powers were slipping.”
Wolff also told BBC Radio in an interview broadcast on Saturday that he believed Trump is unfit for office. He told NBC News on Friday that White House staff around Trump treated him like a child.
Some of the events detailed in the book include claims that Bannon called Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer “treasonous,” that Trump was surprised by his own election win, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin actually can’t be bothered to make nice with the U.S. president.
Despite efforts by Trump’s legal team to halt the release of the book after the first excerpts made headlines, publisher Henry Holt released the bombshell title four days early.
-With files from Reuters