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WVC Wrestling Tournament Preview: Tourney kicks off a sprint to the finish

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Full of optimism, Gov. Wolf prepares for re-election

<p>WASHINGTON &#8212; President Donald Trump felt compelled Saturday to let the world know he&#8217;s playing with all his marbles and is among the sharpest cookies around. </p><p>In a series of tweets, Trump defended his mental fitness and boasted about his brains, saying he is &#8220;like, really smart&#8221; and &#8220;a very stable genius.&#8221; It was the latest pushback against a new book that portrays him as a leader who doesn&#8217;t understand the weight of his office and whose competence is questioned by aides.</p><p>&#8220;Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,&#8221; Trump tweeted from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, a few hours before a strategy session on the 2018 legislative agenda with Republican congressional leaders and Cabinet members.</p><p>And when Trump addressed reporters later, the Ivy League graduate was ready for the question.</p><p>&#8220;I went to the best colleges for college,&#8221; said Trump, who holds a bachelor&#8217;s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. &#8220;I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out, made billions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people, went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard, ran for president one time and won.&#8221;</p><p>His ire was directed at Michael Wolff, author of &#8220;Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.&#8221; The book draws a derogatory portrait of the 45th president as an undisciplined man-child who didn&#8217;t actually want to win the White House, and who spends his evenings eating cheeseburgers in bed, watching television and talking on the telephone to old friends.</p><p>The book also quotes Trump&#8217;s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and other prominent advisers as questioning the president&#8217;s competence.</p><p>&#8220;I consider it a work of fiction,&#8221; Trump told reporters, then bemoaned what he called the country&#8217;s &#8220;weak libel laws.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know this man. I guess sloppy Steve brought him in the White House quite a bit and it was one of those things. That&#8217;s why sloppy Steve is now looking for a job,&#8221; Trump said.</p><p>In one of his morning tweets, the president said critics are &#8220;taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.&#8221;</p><p>He said his journey from &#8220;VERY successful businessman,&#8221; to reality TV star to president on his first try &#8220;would qualify as not smart, but genius &#8230;. and a very stable genius at that!&#8221;</p><p>Reagan died in 2004, at age 93, from pneumonia complicated by the Alzheimer&#8217;s disease that had progressively clouded his mind. At times when he was president, Reagan seemed forgetful and would lose his train of thought while talking.</p><p>Doctors, however, said Alzheimer&#8217;s was not to blame, noting the disease was diagnosed years after he left office. Reagan announced his diagnosis in a letter to the American people in 1994, more than five years after leaving the White House.</p><p>Trump, now 71, was the oldest president ever when assuming office. Reagan was nearly eight months younger.</p><p>Trump&#8217;s chief of staff, John Kelly, who has tried to bring order to a chaotic White House, said he had not seen the tweets until reporters showed them to him just before Trump spoke about noon.</p><p>But he said that Trump didn&#8217;t appear angry Friday or Saturday. &#8220;I thought he would be, frankly,&#8221; Kelly said.</p><p>As for the tweets: &#8220;He feels he can go around the press and get his perspective out by tweeting,&#8221; explained Kelly. &#8220;That&#8217;s kind of why he does it.&#8221;</p><p>Chatter about Trump&#8217;s mental fitness for office has intensified in recent months on cable news shows and among Democrats in Congress.</p><p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week called such suggestions &#8220;disgraceful and laughable.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;If he was unfit, he probably wouldn&#8217;t be sitting there and wouldn&#8217;t have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the Republican Party has ever seen,&#8221; she said, calling him &#8220;an incredibly strong and good leader.&#8221;</p><p>Trump is set to have his first physical examination as president this coming Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.</p><p>This exam does not typically involve having the president undergo a mental health evaluation, as some Democrats have urged.</p><p>Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., introduced a bill in April to establish a commission that would study if the president is mentally or physically unable to perform his duties. And in August, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., introduced a resolution urging the vice president and Cabinet to have Trump undergo a mental and physical exam to determine if he&#8217;s competent. Neither measure has gone anywhere.</p><p>In early December, the House voted overwhelmingly to kill a resolution from a liberal Democrat to impeach Trump. Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, said Trump had associated his presidency with causes rooted in bigotry and racism.</p><p>To back his claim accusing Trump of high misdemeanors, Green cited incidents such as Trump&#8217;s blaming both sides for violence at a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his sharing of hateful, anti-Muslim videos posted online by a fringe British extremist group.</p><p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a statement shortly before the vote that while &#8220;legitimate questions have been raised about his fitness to lead this nation,&#8221; they argued &#8220;now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jill Colvin -Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

Trump: “I’m smart and stable”