CNN’s Jim Acosta said on Sunday that he believes President Donald Trump is “crazy like a fox,” The Hill reports.
The White House correspondent made the remarks while weighing in on recent discussions about Trump’s mental health and fitness for office. According to Acosta, the president does not actually have mental health issues — as some have alleged — he is “more crazy like a fox,” meaning; cunning, and acting with hidden motives.
“I tell folks, I’m not a psychiatrist, I can’t assess the president’s mental state, but I will tell you is my sense of it, covering him for a pretty long period of time now, is that he’s more crazy like a fox,” the reporter said.
Acosta — whose public disputes with Trump have been widely reported on, even prompting the journalist to write a book about the president’s relationship with the media — explained that he believes Trump makes sensationalistic statements in order to shift the media’s attention away from important issues and control the narrative.
The reporter explained that he had talked to Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who revealed to him that Trump is sometimes purposely saying “sensational things” in order to influence the news cycle and control media narratives about his presidency.
“Bannon explains in an interview that I had with him, that what Trump tries to do is really control the narrative by saying sensational things that sound wild and nutty sometimes, and he does this because he knows it dominates the news cycle,” Acosta said.
As The Hill notes, Acosta’s comments came mere hours after lawyer George Conway, a Trump critic and White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband, called Trump “mentally unwell,” urging him to resign. According to Conway, Trump’s behavior would have gotten him fired from any other position.
But Conway is not the first person to publicly question the commander-in-chief’s mental health. Many have done so over the past three years, and some Democratic lawmakers are now taking action meant to scrutinize Trump’s “deteriorating” mental health.
As The Inquisitr reported, Democratic representatives John Yarmuth and Jamie Raskin announced earlier this week that they will be organizing a Capitol Hill event meant to draw attention to Trump’s mental fitness. Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee will be the main star of the town hall-like happening, the lawmakers announced.
House Democrats plan event to examine Donald Trump’s allegedly deteriorating mental health https://t.co/Hip1iWfJKu
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) June 8, 2019
Lee is known for publicly discussing the president’s alleged mental issues, which is frowned upon by medical professionals, and editing The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
Every lawmaker in Washington will be invited, according to the organizers.