Trump claims he's 'like, really smart' and a 'stable genius' after Fire and Fury release

President Donald Trump is defending his mental stability following the publication of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, the explosive new book from Michael Wolff. Amid a flurry of tweets posted to social media on Friday night, Trump trashed Wolff as “a total loser” and referred to himself as “like, really smart” and “a very stable genius.”

“Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence,” Trump wrote.

To clarify, special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” Trump continued. “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star… to 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!”

Trump took issue with numerous embarrassing details printed in the book, including one excerpt in which Wolff wrote of Trump’s staff, “My indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.”

Wolff also printed an essay in The Hollywood Reporter stating Trump “had trouble recognizing old friends,” an indication of an apparent fading memory.

The author appeared on the TODAY show Friday and stood by everything printed in Fire and Fury. “I absolutely spoke to the president… it certainly was not off the record,” Wolff told Savannah Guthrie. He also added, “I work like every journalist works, so I have recordings, I have notes. I am certainly, in absolutely every way, comfortable with everything I’ve reported in this book.”

“Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” Trump began his Friday night tweet stream. “He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!”

This also marks the latest attack from Trump on Bannon, his former chief strategist. In Fire and Fury, Wolff interviewed Bannon, who used “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” to describe Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer to purportedly obtain damning information on Hillary Clinton.

Trump further exacerbated the situation when he stated Bannon “not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”

After portions of Fire and Fury were reported on by The Guardian and then printed in New York magazine, Trump’s lawyers issued a cease and desist in an attempt to stop the book’s publication. However, Wolff and publisher Henry Holt and Co. bumped up the planned release to Friday, Jan. 5.

This publicity led Fire and Fury to jump more than 40,000 spots on Amazon’s best-seller’s list to No. 1.

The president also tweeted that “the African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years” during his first year in office, citing an analysis published in The Washington Post.

Trump then, again, slammed Brian Ross, the suspended ABC reporter who falsely reported former national security advisor Michael Flynn would testify that Trump instructed him to make contact with the Russians during the presidential campaign. Flynn plead guilty to lying to the F.B.I. over Mueller’s Russia investigation, though it was later reported Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, told Flynn to contact Russian officials.

Ross is now returning to the network at a lower position, according to CNN.

“Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity,” Trump wrote. “He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired!”