TRUMP: I’M A GENIUS, A VERY STABLE GENIUS
US president defends his mental state with tweets of being ‘really smart’
WASHINGTON, DC
PRESIDENT Donald Trump, in an extraordinary defense of his mental capacity and fitness for office, described himself yesterday as a “genius” and “a very stable genius at that.”
In a series of Twitter messages that seemed to respond to revelations in a new book, Trump defended himself by charting his rise to the presidency, saying one of his chief assets was “being, like, really smart”.
“Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public,” Trump wrote on Twitter, “the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.
“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” Trump tweeted.
“Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from successful businessman, to top TV Star... to president of the United States (on my first try),” Trump continued on Twitter.
“I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius... and a very stable genius at that!”
Even for a president who has shattered many conventions in office, Trump’s response to the criticisms in the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, stood out.
The book included depictions by top White House staff painting Trump as an uninformed and, at times, erratic president. By taking on the issue so directly, the president ensured that the discussion of his capacity would only intensify.
He is set to undergo a physical examination this week, but those tests for presidents do not generally involve mental acuity.
Trump is at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, meeting Republican leaders, cabinet officials and top aides.
The long-simmering argument about the president’s state of mind had roiled the political and psychiatric worlds and thrust the country into uncharted territory.
What it comes down to is an effort to understand and explain a president, who acts so differently from every other person to have held his office.
In conversations with friends, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, had often described Trump as “crazy, but he’s a genius”.
Earlier, Washington’s chief diplomat Rex Tillerson found himself obliged to defend Trump’s fitness for office
In an extraordinary portion of a television interview on foreign policy challenges, Tillerson was asked about claims that Trump had a short attention span, regularly repeated himself and refused to read briefing notes.
“I’ve never questioned his mental fitness. I’ve had no reason to question his mental fitness,” said Tillerson.
“I’m here to serve his presidency. So, I’ve had to spend a lot of time understanding how to best communicate with him,” he told CNN.
But he emphasised the right decisions had been made and that the US was in a stronger place internationally, thanks to Trump’s policies. Agencies