Donald Trump claims his greatest assets are his 'mental stability and being, like, really smart'

‘I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius... and a very stable genius at that,’ tweets the President

Donald Trump has claimed his two greatest assets are his mental stability and “being, like, really smart”.

In a series of early-morning tweets, the President hit back at questions about his capacity for office after revelations in Michael Wolff’s explosive new book renewed scrutiny of his mental health.

“The Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence,” Mr Trump wrote.

He added: “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.

“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 TV 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!”

Mr Trump’s fitness for office has been repeatedly questioned by critics since he entered the White House, with some invoking the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which lays out the procedure for removing a President deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.

Democratic members of Congress have called for the President to undergo psychological evaluation to establish if he is fit for office, while a Yale University psychiatry professor told US lawmakers she believes Mr Trump’s mental was “unravelling” and posed “public health risk” if he remained in the White House.

The publication of Mr Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, this week shed light on apparent concerns among the President’s aides over his mental state.

“Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions,” the veteran journalist wrote in the tell-all work, based on interviews with senior White House staff.

“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.”

The book also quotes former Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s former chief strategist, discussing the possibility of the President being unable to complete his his four-year term, noting the possibility of “a threat by the cabinet to act on the 25th Amendment”.

“He’s not going to make it,“ Mr Bannon is reported to have said. ”He’s lost his stuff.”

The White House has condemned suggestions Mr Trump is unfit to serve as President as “disgraceful and laughable”.

“If he was unfit, he probably wouldn’t be sitting there and wouldn’t have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the Republican Party has ever seen,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

“This is an incredibly strong and good leader.”

The President has angrily denounced Mr Wolff’s book as “phony” and “full of lies”, describing the author as “a total loser who made up stories” to sell copies.

Last year the American Psychiatric Association warned its members to stop psychoanalysing Mr Trump from afar, saying “to do so would not only be unethical, it would be irresponsible”.