Trump cites Reagan, defends mental fitness
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has called himself a “very stable genius” as he and his aides continued to battle a book that has shook up presidency with claims that he was not prepared for the job and that he was mentally unfit to carry out his duties.
For the second day running, Trump defended his mental fitness, tweeting on Sunday: “Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!” He was referring to former president Ronald Reagan, who faced questions about his mental fitness due to his age.
A day earlier, Trump tweeted about his greatest assets— “mental stability” and being “really smart”. “President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius .... and a very stable genius at that!”
He built on it on Sunday: “I went to the best colleges for college … I was a very excellent student. Came out and made billions and billions of dollars. Became one of the top businesspeople. Went to television and, for ten years, was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard. Ran for president one time and won.”
But Trump did little to help himself by comparing himself to Reagan. Commentators noted that Reagan, it turned out later, did indeed have problems.
As The Washington Post noted: “The news media did indeed question Reagan’s mental health at times, but such questions were at least somewhat validated by the 40th president’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1994 and his son’s 2011 claim that Reagan displayed symptoms of the disease while in office.”