White House sources tell author that Trump is 'insane' and that his attacks on the media started as an act, then spiraled out of control

Donald Trump’s war with the US press began as an act in the absence of effective Democratic opposition then spiraled out of control, according to an eagerly awaited new book by one of the chief targets of the president’s fury.

In The Enemy of the People, CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta writes that after an early confrontation, close Trump aide Hope Hicks called him to say the president wanted him to know he was “very professional today”.

“He said, ‘Jim gets it’,” Hicks is quoted as saying.

Trump, Acosta writes, had just called the reporter “fake news” and “very fake news” after being asked about Russian election interference at a press conference in February 2017.

“When he called us ‘fake news’,” Acosta writes, “it was, in his mind, an act.”

The incident occurred amid the opening shots in a rapidly escalating war that now sees fierce national debate over Trump’s attacks on mainstream media and what they mean for press safety and US democracy itself.

Acosta’s book, subtitled A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America, will be published on 11 June. The Guardian obtained a copy.

True to the style of Washington political reporting often complained about by Trump, Acosta mostly uses unnamed sources, many of whom are said to have spoken over social drinks. They are often blunt in their assessment of their boss. A “senior White House official” tells Acosta: “The president’s insane.” A “former White House national security official” says staffers were not sure the president had not been “compromised” by Russia.

Psychology Today wrote:The fact that Trump has shown all the major symptoms of neurosyphilis, including irritability, delusional thinking, grandiosity, and patchy hair loss, provides a basis to fear that he could be in the late stages of neurological illness due to syphilis infection, according to the medical expert.

“Commonly recognized symptoms include irritability, loss of ability to concentrate, delusional thinking, and grandiosity. Memory, insight, and judgment can become impaired. Insomnia may occur… Dementia… and patchy hair loss can also be seen in later stages of syphilis.”

Visual problems may develop, including the inability of pupils to react to the light. This, along other ocular pathology, can result in photophobia, dimming of vision, and squinting.

Vintage wrote:Does anyone back him on really?
I seem to remember people saying he should be given a chance at least and he'd prove himself either way, sadly it seems he is proving to be wrong. Don't blame people forgiving someone a chance and being proven wrong.
He used the lost hopes and aspirations of so many ordinary people to get where he is, those people who listened to his words shouldn't be blamed either, their world had been pulled from under them after all, it happened to be in the US but there are people all over Europe in the same situation and are beginning to have enough of empty promises and will listen to, when given hope, even apparently unsavoury characters, politicians have brought this on themselves, the have nots are fed up of promises and lip service from the haves. All most people want is a job that'll keep them and their families in reasonable comfort.