Author Michael Wolff said Friday that ‘100 percent’ of the people around President Donald Trump question his intelligence and fitness for office, with some calling him a ‘moron’ and an ‘idiot.’
Even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s son-in-law and elder daughter, both of whom are senior White House advisers, have moved out of the way to let the bus roll over the former Trump Organization executive, Wolff said.
‘They all say he is like a child. And what they mean like that is a need for immediate gratification. It’s all about him,’ Wolff told ‘Today’ on Friday. ‘They say he’s a moron, an idiot.’
Author Michael Wolff said Friday that ‘100 percent’ of the people around President Donald Trump question his intelligence and fitness for office, with some calling him a ‘moron’ and an ‘idiot’
Wolff claimed there’s a ‘competition to get to the bottom line here of who this man is’ within the White House.
‘This man does not read, does not listen. He’s like a pinball, just shooting off the sides.’
The White House slapped down speculation that the president is ‘unfit’ for office on Thursday after anecdotes in a bombshell book about the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency raised new questions about the 71-year-old’s mental competency.
‘It’s disgraceful and laughable. If he was unfit he probably wouldn’t be sitting there, wouldn’t have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the Republican Party has ever seen,’ press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
A news report also revealed today that congressional Democrats invited a Yale psychologist to provide them with an assessment of president’s cognitive activity.
Author Michael Wolff claimed in a Thursday essay in the Hollywood Reporter that Trump is increasingly forgetful, repeating stories word-for-word inside 10 minutes and failing to recognize old friends.
The essay is based on his explosive book, Fire and Fury, and includes other material.
To hide his failings from the public, Wolff claims the White House hatched a plan last fall to have interviewers submit their questions beforehand.
To hide his failings from the public, Michael Wolff claims White House Communications Director Hope Hicks (left) hatched a plan last fall to have interviewers submit their questions to President Trump beforehand. They’re seen aboard Air Force One in November
From erratic tweeting to slurred speech, Trump’s mental state has continually been questioned by Democrats, some of whom are trying to impeach him.
‘Morning Joe’ host Joe Scarborough also assessed after a set of recent incidents that Trump appears to be suffering from dementia.
Retiring Sen. Bob Corker also drew blood in August when he asserted that Trump has not shown the ‘stability nor some of the competence’ that’s necessary for him to be successful in his position.
Wolff delivered another blow to the president when said in a Thursday column of the Trump White House, ‘Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn’t stop saying something.’
‘At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends,’ Wolff writes.
The author, who says he was provided widespread access to the White House after running his book pitch by Trump himself, says the president’s advisors and family ‘all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job’ within months of Trump taking office.
Michael Wolff claimed in a Thursday essay in the Hollywood Reporter that Trump is increasingly forgetful, repeating stories word-for-word inside 10 minutes and failing to recognized old friends. He’s seen on NYE at his Palm Beach resort celebrating the holiday with friends
White House Communications Director Hope Hicks is especially ‘attentive to his lapses and repetitions’ and ‘urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the fall season’ of ’60 Minutes, ‘he claims. That is how Fox News’ Sean Hannity landed an Oct. 12 interview with Trump.
Wolff says White House insiders told him that Hannity offered to ‘supply the questions beforehand,’ setting a new standard in the Trump administration.
‘Indeed, the plan was to have all interviewers going forward provide the questions,’ Wolff wrote in the Hollywood Reporter, which employs him as a columnist.
Hannity disputed this claim through a spokesperson, telling DailyMail.com: ‘I never provided questions ahead of time to President Trump and never said I was going to quit my longtime, successful TV and radio career to work for his administration.
As copy from Wolff’s unreleased book circulated on Wednesday, a fresh inquiry was raised about Trump’s mental stability following a tweet the president sent needling North Korea’s 33-year-old tyrant.
Kim had said that he has a ‘nuclear button’ that can launch missiles capable of hitting targets anywhere in the U.S.
‘Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!’ Trump on Tuesday evening responded.
Kim’s New Year address also included a warning to the US that he has a ‘nuclear button’ on his table, prompting a furious response from President Trump via Twitter (above_
NBC White House Correspondent Peter Alexander subsequently asked the White House if Americans should be ‘concerned about the president’s mental fitness.’
‘I think the President and the people of this country should be concerned about the mental fitness of the leader of North Korea,’ Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders fired back.
Swatting the line of questioning down at the televised news conference, Sanders said: ‘This is a President who’s not going to cower down and he’s not going to be weak, and is going to make sure that he does what he’s promised to do, and that’s stand up and protect the American people.’
Asked about Trump’s mental state again on Thursday, Sanders said, ‘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.’
More than a dozen Democrats and one Republican senator were briefed last month by a Yale psychiatrist, Politico revealed on Thursday. Trump’s tweets were the impetus.
‘We feel that the rush of tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress. Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency,’ Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee told the publication.
Scarborugh, an ex-Republican congressman who now co-hosts an MSNBC program, has also evaluated Trump’s durability.
Noting that the president has demonstrated cognitive interruptions similar to the behavior he has observed in his own mother, Scarborough said during a December show, ‘Unfortunately in the case of my mother, I can move that to the side and I am totally fine with that.
‘In this case, Donald Trump has control of nuclear weapons,’ the former Republican congressman added.
On another program, Scarborough said Trump is in the ‘early stages of dementia.’
‘Everybody around Donald Trump knows he’s not stable. Everybody around Donald Trump knows he’s not stable now. Everybody,’ Scarborough stated.