"Sharp as a tack." White House denies Trump is "unstable and stupid"

On Saturday, Trump went on a Twitter rant extolling himself as a “very stable genius,” while his surrogates hit the Sunday shows to defend his mental fitness with varying degrees of spectacular failure.

Then on Monday, aboard Air Force One en route to Nashville, deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley was asked why Trump felt the need to tweet that he’s a “very stable genius,” and Gidley responded that “most of the press calls him unstable and stupid.”

Several members of Trump’s own inner circle have called him a “moron,” a “child,” an “idiot,” and a “fucking fool.”

But Gidley insisted that Trump’s record shows that Trump is “brilliant” and “sharp as a tack.”

As if it needed refutation, Gidley’s laugh-line came on the heels of reports that Trump’s own lawyers don’t trust him to speak with special counsel Robert Mueller without committing perjury.

Gidley was also asked to comment on Steve Bannon’s botched attempt at an apology. “I don’t think there’s any way back for him at this point,” Gidley responded.

Ironically, it may be Trump who has a hard time finding his way back from the disastrous fallout from Wolff’s book, which has opened the floodgates to discussions about Trump’s fitness for office. Every move Trump and his team take in response to the book seems only to confirm the worst suspicions raised in it.

That includes Bannon, whose apology succeeded only in confirming that he did, in fact, refer to the Trump Tower collusion meeting as “treasonous.”

The most frightening thing about this turn of events, for Trump supporters, is that the only course of action that would help is completely impossible for Trump to accomplish: simply shutting up.