Washington, Jan 6 (IANS) US President Donald Trump, in an extraordinary defence of his mental capacity and fitness for office, described himself on Saturday as a "genius", after a new book suggested that top White House aides feared he was unfit for the job.
In a series of Twitter messages that seemed to respond to revelations in author Michael Wolff's new book "Fire and Fury", Trump defended himself by charting his rise to the presidency, saying one of his chief assets throughout his life was "being, like, really smart".
Trump cited his career in business and reality television and his victory in last year's election as evidence of his mental prowess.
He again lashed out at the ongoing special counsel investigation into his campaign's contacts with Russian operatives, calling suggestions that he colluded with Moscow a "total hoax on the American public".
The book included depictions by top White House staff members painting Trump as an "uninformed and at times erratic President", the Washington Post reported.
Late Friday, Trump blasted Wolff as a "total loser", and the President mocked his former campaign chairman and White House adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, who was a key source for the book.
Bannon criticized other aides and Trump's son, calling a meeting at Trump Tower last year between Donald Jr and a Russian lawyer "treasonous".
White House aides have mounted an all-out attack on the book, calling it "fiction" and a "complete fantasy". And Trump's lawyers sent cease-and-desist letters to Wolff and his publisher demanding that they do not release the book.
But the publisher, Henry Holt, moved up the release date from later this month to Friday amid the publicity and hard copies were quickly sold out in the Washington area.
"It's disgraceful and laughable," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said while responding to suggestions that Trump was "mentally unfit for office".
"If he was unfit, he probably wouldn't be sitting there and wouldn't have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the Republican Party has ever seen. This is an incredibly strong and good leader.
"That's why we've had such a successful 2017 and why we're going to continue to do great things as we move forward in this administration," she said.
When Trump said that Democrats would better at the polls if they were more like him, Melania starts to laugh out loud, but she catches herself. After the infamous hand slap seen around the world, it is clear that the President and First Lady are a picture of blissful marriage.
As Trump rambled on, his wife seemed to be thinking, “I moved from New York for this?”
It is impossible to take Donald Trump seriously as a president when his own wife can’t make it through an interview without wanting to laugh in his face. Not even his own wife is capable of treating Trump like a credible president
Jared Kushner tried to save himself from the Russia scandal by blaming everything related to the meeting with Russians on Donald Trump Jr.
Here is the part of Kushner’s statement to Senate staffers that makes the family strategy clear:
In June 2016, my brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. asked if I was free to stop by a meeting on June 9 at 3:00 p.m. The campaign was headquartered in the same building as his office in Trump Tower, and it was common for each of us to swing by the other’s meetings when requested. He eventually sent me his own email changing the time of the meeting to 4:00 p.m. That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time. As I did with most emails when I was working remotely, I quickly reviewed on my iPhone the relevant message that the meeting would occur at 4:00 PM at his office. Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as “Meeting: Don Jr.| Jared Kushner.” No one else was mentioned.
panel of experts on MSNBC’s AM Joy predicted Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) could be indicted for obstruction of justice for using his position as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee to subvert special counsel Robert Mueller.
Former assistant Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks believes that enough evidence already exists in the public realm to charge President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice.
Trump defended his mental capacity to serve as president today both on twitter & on television. Which made it even clearer that Trump’s mentally unwell & unfit to serve.