Donald Trump’s biographer says the president’s wild autism claims prove something even one of his oldest political aides once admitted: the president is an “idiot.”
Trump boldly asserted a link between pregnant women’s Tylenol use and autism in newborn babies on Monday, an unproven theory swiftly dismissed by major health organizations and national governments.
Author Michael Wolff told the Inside Trump’s Head podcast that the bonkers announcement triggered a flashback to a revealing conversation he had with one of Trump’s earliest political advisers, Sam Nunberg, while working on his 2018 tell-all book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
At the time, Wolff said, he thought that Trump could be an “interesting president” who might do “the unexpected in a good way.”
But when Wolff floated the idea to “Trump whisperer” Sam Nunberg—who advised Trump in his early political forays before being forced out of the 2016 campaign when his racist Facebook comments resurfaced—he got a frank reply.
“He said, ‘You don’t get it, do you?’” Wolff recounted. “He said, ‘He’s an idiot!’ And at that moment, it all came clear to me because Trump is, in very classic terms, an idiot.”
He continued, “[Trump] knows nothing about anything. He listens to no one. He’s just off half-cocked this way and that way.”
In response to Wolff’s comments, Nunberg told the Daily Beast: “That was a long time ago and President Trump has certainly proved me wrong by getting [re-elected] in 2024.”
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast, “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Wolff told host Joanna Coles that the commander-in-chief is always looking to “one up” actual experts with “a level of extremism.”
Trump veered off script while giving his administration’s questionable findings on Tylenol at the White House Tuesday, declaring that “certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines or don’t take any pills that have no autism.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist who has sought to link vaccines to autism, chimed in: “There are some studies that suggest that, yeah, with the Amish, for example.”
“See, Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says, and he should, but I’m not so careful with what I say,” Trump remarked, before continuing to dole out novel medical advice for Americans.
Coles questioned why Dr. Mehmet Oz, who flanked Trump during Monday’s announcement, would go along with the president’s claims, noting that the celebrity doctor had once been “highly regarded” as a professor of surgery at Columbia University.
On Tuesday, there were hints that Oz, whom Trump appointed as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, might not have been entirely on the same page as the president, despite nodding approvingly the day before.
In an interview with TMZ, Oz said pregnant women should “take [Tylenol] when it’s appropriate” and said the painkiller is “probably your best option.”
Trump had insisted, “With Tylenol, don’t take it. Don’t take it,” and instructed pregnant women to “tough it out.”
The post How Trump Just Proved He’s an Idiot: Wolff appeared first on The Daily Beast.
