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Jim Acosta: Trump Is ‘Crazy Like A Fox’

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CNN’s Jim Acosta said President Donald Trump is “crazy like a fox” during a Sunday morning discussion about the president’s mental health.

The network’s chief White House correspondent was discussing his upcoming book, “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America,” with CNN host Brian Stelter on “Reliable Sources.” During their conversation, Stelter brought up an “unnamed senior White House official” quoted in Acosta’s book as saying the president is “insane.”

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“Was that person speaking literally or figuratively?” Stelter asked.

“I think he was venting his frustrations,” said Acosta. “I later went back and talked to this official and I said, ‘why did you say that?’ Really, I was just frustrated with the president’s lack of understanding of the Constitution, the constraints placed on the presidency. You know, guardrails were put in place by our Founding Fathers. The president wanted to know how long you can keep an acting secretary on. He wanted to know, you know, what else he could do with his cabinet. It’s this kind of behavior behind-the-scenes that really frustrates his top officials I think a lot more than people understand. This official was trying to explain all of that.”

Stelter brought up George Conway’s latest Twitter rant about the president being “mentally unwell” and in need of “psychological treatment.” (RELATED: Acosta Offers Conspiracy Theory Behind Tiger’s Presidential Medal)

“How do you view this as someone who covers the Trump White House every day, that these questions are even out there at all?” asked the CNN anchor.

I get asked this question from time to time. I tell folks I’m not a psychiatrist so I can’t assess the president’s mental state, but I will tell you my sense of it is, covering him for a pretty long period of time now, is that he’s more crazy like a fox. For example, I talk about it in the book, Steve Bannon explains in an interview I had with him that, you know, 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. And so that makes it a priority for us in the news business to talk about him nonstop and he loves that and he capitalizes on that.

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