anything like that. >> it's absolutely his decision. >> this author is, quite frankly, a crack pot fantasy news faction writer. >> we're caught up debating the mental health of the president. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> good morning and welcome to your "new day." it's friday, january 5th, 8:00 in the east. we have two big stories following. first, the man behind the explosive tell-all book behind the white house, and dropping even more eyebrow raising claims about donald trump, and his name is michael wolff and he insists 100% of the people around the president question his fitness for office, and 100%, and quoted that one said he is like a child.

wolff suggesting the president, that he was told, has lost it. the president said the book is zero lies and he had zero access, which wolff says is not true, and cnn has read through it but cannot confirm all of wolff's allegations. >> "the times" is reporting that the president ordered a white house lawyer to stop attorney general sessions from recusing himself in that justice department russia probe. the special counsel, robert mueller, is aware of the unsuccessful attempt to lobby jeff sessions. let's listen to some of the news interview with the author, michael wolff. >> according to your reporting everybody around the president, senior advisers, family members, every single one of them questions his intelligence and fit for office. >> let me put a marker in the sand here.

100% of the people around him. >> jared kushner, his son-in-law, ivanka trump, question his fitness for office? >> every time -- i want to be careful about who i spoke to because the nature of this kind of book is you grant everyone avail, and having said that certainly jared and ivanka, in their current situation, which is in a deep legal quagmire are putting everything on the president, it's not us, it's him. >> what do they describe to you, the ones closest to him? >> the one description everybody gave, everybody has in common, they all say he's like a child. what they mean by that is he has a need for immediate gratification. it's all about him. i mean, this letter for the

cease and desist letter, and i still have sources in the white house and everybody was going, we should not be doing this, this is not smart, and he just insists -- he just has to be satisfied in the moment. >> you said that these senior people insult his intelligence. what are the kinds of things people would say? >> they say he's a moron, an idiot. actually, there's a competition to sort of get to the bottom line here of who this man is. let's remember, this man does not read, does not listen. he's like a -- like a pinball, just shooting off the sides. >> one of the more disturbing observations you make in the book is that the president's close advisers, people around him have noticed him repeating stories, expression for

expression, you say, in a sort period of time. >> in a shortening period. they have all tracked this. it used to be -- i know people would point out in the beginning it was every 25 to 30 minutes you would get the same three stories repeated. now it's the same three stories in every ten minutes. >> what is the suggestion there? that goes beyond saying, okay, the president is not an intellectual? what are you arguing there? you said he was at mar-a-lago and did not recognize life-long friends? >> i will quote steve bannon, he's lost it. >> harsh words from the author of the book, "fire and fury." let's get reaction from somebody that knows the president well, chris ruddy. what is your reaction to what you just heard? >> chris, this is just so absurd and ridiculous, so 100%, i am

around the president and have been around him quite a bit the past year and met him 20 years ago. he's not psychologically unfit or lost it as he claimed. i saw the president every other day over a ten-day period during the holiday, and i conversed with him numerous time and i saw him interact with people, and he was remembering things and he was on point and following up on discussions. i brought to the golf club a well-respected "new york times" reporter that had a half-hour sit-down interview with him, michael schmitt, and i don't believe michael walked out and said this man is crazy or unfit. this is just an absurd allegation by somebody who has talked to a lot of disgruntled people at the white house. i was with the president in early december, and i spent an hour and a half with them in the private residence, and the

conversation was terrific. he was not repeating things. a mutual friend of ours, he had no belief and view the president was mentally incompetent and unfit, and this is trash, really. >> you have two possibilities. one is everybody wolff spoke to either told him something isn't true or wolff is reporting it untruthfully. do you think that's the case? >> michael did a hit book on ruppard murdoch, and a lot of people are suspect of the -- >> he was welcomed into this administration, though, chris. the president can say he didn't talk to him, but, michael wolff says that is false, and he was welcomed in. >> you know who welcomed him in? steve bannon welcomed him in

because he thought he was going to write a book about steve, and reince priebus did not even know who he was. most of these political folks, and the president didn't really know who he was and the president said he never spoke to him or said he had no contact. >> no, the president said he did not speak to him about the book and michael wolff says it's not true. wolff says he can show that he spoke to the president about this book. >> you know donald trump for a long time and one of his weaknesses is he talks to everybody and he's very candid and open and very unsuspecting of people and he just let's it all out, and that's been one of his strengths with the public in a lot of ways and we also see weaknesses where people take advantage of the situation. >> that's fine as a character issue, chris, we all have our flaws, but when you lie about a

situation it gives credence to the other side. if he lies about talking to the guy, i will believe the other guy more because he was false in that situation. >> michael wolff is saying something that is a lie, he said 100% of the people -- >> that he spoke to. >> yeah, and michael wolff is a liberal elite who 100% of his friends voted for hillary and want to overturn the election result. that's what this story is really about. >> i am not a defender of michael wolff, but he has come after people, some of my own family, and i think he's an equal opportunity guy when he's telling a story, i am not going to give you that he's just a lefty, and i don't buy it because he does what he does and shame on the white house for the move of letting him in if they don't like his style. there's a second possibility,

okay, the president is the way you describe him in his competence, his mental fitness, but he is showcasing the worst part of himself, or him at his worse, could that be the case? >> every president makes mistakes in office. what are the mistakes? stock market record highs, and the lowest unemployment in modern times -- >> could be apples and oranges. first of all you have to look at what happened before him, that attributes to the economic situation now, and then you also have to put on top of that that those could all be real despite how he is conducting himself, not because of how heis conducting himself. >> chris, i would recommend you

read a book about the secret service about ten years ago, and he interviewed all the secret service agents between john kennedy and bill clinton. what you find in there is amazing stories about what the presidents and their families do behind the scenes. most of this never makes the light of day, gets out in public, but you will see that donald trump's not too different than any other president in private. the problem he's had is he's had a lot of people out there that go racing to the press to say he said this privately or that privately. if you and i had our kitchen table conversation revealed at night we probably would not be worki working publicly -- >> yeah, i have talked to different presidents and their teams. he's nothing like any of them, and that could contribute to why he falls into the holes that he does, in terms of how he reacts. >> the public knew that.

you and i knew that when he was elected. >> all i am saying is you are now seeing the results of that. i am not saying he didn't win the election right and he was not recognized as such by people, and this man sent out two cease and decyst requests. >> that's donald trump. >> but that's not -- >> he's punching back when you punch him. i disagree. they shouldn't allow the publication of the book. he should not be paying so much attention to michael wolff or steve bannon. >> but he does.

this is the worst of donald trump. i grew up around him and you know him very well and i have seen him do this time and again, he's doing it more often and less appropriately and it raises the question, okay, i am sure his mind is strong and he's one of the smartest guys in the room as he will say, all the time, fine, but it's all about conditions and circumstances and situations and he's not used to this and it's bringing out in him objectively his worse side on a regular basis. couldn't that be a fair assessment? >> i think that's a fair assessment because of all the attacks he's going down, punching down and getting in the gutter with these guys and he's focusing too much -- it's generally a fair assessment with what you are saying, chris. >> that's the distraction. that's why i say certain things are getting done despite how he's behaving, and the picture of the white house is not news to me or you, and you know a lot of people running around trying

to manage his emotions and keep him on message and trying to get him to divorce the me from the we, to forget it and take it on the chin, mr. president, it's not about you and let's get it done and he's not able to do it effectively? >> we have spent 48 hours talking about anonymous sources that that michael wolff, quote, unquote, has in the white house, and i can't believe half the things he is saying on the president's condition, but if people like general mattis and general kelly and other people around the president with great respect, mike pence, if they say the president is unfit, that's a serious charge. they may have criticisms of the president, but you are not hearing that from a cabinet level. >> michael wolff says he is hearing that. i am not talking about 25th amendment or competence -- >> i get what you are outlining there, that's the threshold for

triggering that, but i'm saying it could be the case and it seems to be objectively on what i have to deal with every day, sometimes minute by minute on this show, the president can seem overwhelmed and consumed on what things mean to him and he can focus on that and that's a dangerous thing to do. >> he does not take criticism, that's true. steve bannon was fired in august and he said that the president was delusional, and he said the trump presidency was over, and i said that was delusional. >> and the president kept in touch with him, right. normally you write him off and never talk to him again, and that didn't happen here.

>> steve has a major website and is a intphrupbfluence in the ren party. he said the trump white house was over, and i think that was delusional, and the facts have shown that not to be true. >> i get you. you don't think he has a fitness issue. i hear you and you made the point and it's out there for the audience to digest. let's end on this idea. this book is not new for a lot of people, okay? these are not new perceptions of donald trump as a man nor as a president. can you say as somebody who is close to him that you don't have any concerns about how he is conducting himself in that role? >> i don't have any concerns psychologically. i do think his approaches to things, i think twitter needs to be reviewed before it goes out, and i think he needs to take some of the personal attacks out of this, and he needs to ignore

people below him -- >> what does it mean to you that he insists on not doing any of those things despite how many fair and smart and experienced people like you tell him that? >> i know it's disturbing, but he was elected by the american people doing these types of things, disturbing to people like you, and i think that, you know, he was elected and i think at the end of the day he will prove effective using twitter to get elected and he sees the media attacking him all the time and feels that he needs to have the venue and outlet, but i would encourage him and i advised him publicly and privately to do it that way, and i think eventually he will but he decided to do it his way, and he is the president and was dually elected? >> nobody says he was dually elected, but it's how he does the job. i like it. it works for me and gives me the insight into the mind of a man

where usually i have to kill myself to just get a whiff of what he puts out in huge plumes of smoke and fire every day, so i like it, and i use it, and it benefits me in my coverage of the white house, so i don't want any of it to stop, but i am saying how he does it could very easily work against him and that's the portrait portrayed in this book and it's not new to people. last word? >> i think the media loves donald trump, one-third of the "new york times" subscriber base has come since trump has been elected. i think what he's doing for the economy and the country's security, he knows he will judge him by that and the public will judge him that by ultimately. >> always appreciate your perspective. you are always welcome here on

"new day." michael wolff just said it again, 100% of the people around the president do not think he's capable of functioning in the job. wolff says that includes jared and ivanka. we will tell you what he says, next. whoooo.

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mcgahn. now it's the same three stories in every ten minutes. >> what is the suggestion there, because that goes beyond saying okay, the president is not an intellectual? what are you arguing there? you say he was at mar-a-lago and did not recognize life-long friends. >> i will quote steve bannon, he's lost it. >> that's author michael wolff just this hour talking about his new book that paints a picture of dysfunction and chaos inside the white house, and it also

questions the mental fitness on donald trump. let's bring in our senior analysts. that story, i read that in the books notes, that's troubling, right, repeating the same story over and over again, that's worry some when your relatives do it. a lot of people have said this is the same trump we have always known, he's unfocused and can't focus long enough to read nothing is new, but when it goes from half an hour time period to repeat to a ten-minute period, and we have to talk about this if people think he's deteriorating. >> that's the implication that wolff is getting, he's saying that, you know, his republertoi

has decreased, and this has occurred since the campaign. as citizens we have an interest and the mental health allegedly or mental capacity of our president, and the armchair diagnosis is a tricky game. >> yeah, delicate for sure. >> it's not that he's unfit for office literally but whether he's fit to do the job in a capacity standpoint. >> i think that's fine. you can ask all the questions, we are journalist and not doctors, and we know that, and michael wolff says he's repeating stories more and more often. look, this could be evidence of lots of different things, but as we were just parsing with chris ruddy, there's something probably closer to the truth which is is he losing it, is his mental capacity not there, if he took a competency test, would he fail it? probably not is my thought, but he could be overwhelmed by the job, and it could be through

stress and pressure putting him in a position where he's not at his best on a regular basis, and i would suggest he's at his worse too often and people can't control it, and it was hard for ruddy to disagree with that. what is your take? >> in your interview with ruddy, he has a strong competent cabinet that has received praise and we have seen results whether it's deregulation or finally a piece of legislation with the tax overhaul and then there's the president and his behavior, and that's where chris ruddy who talks to the president regularly and wants the best for him discusses the fact that the president often is counter productive and his own worse enemy because of the way he behaves, particularly on twitter but also the fact that he has not seemed to adjust from the fact that he's no longer an entertainer and real estate

developer held in a close family business, and he has multiple things on his plate and he has to let certain things go, and do not punch down and be judicious of when you punch at all, and i think if the president was ever able to transform himself to somebody who understands -- appears to understood -- that's the thing, appears to understand what the job is and was a little more careful in how he used twitter, which was effective for him during the campaign, and now he's governing, then the view of revelations in books like this would be more questionable, and people might be willing to look -- might not be as willing to believe a lot of the commentary that has come out of it. >> john? >> you saw chris ruddy, he's brought out as a friend of trump and spoke to him over the holidays, very close to, basically attack wolff and

defend the author, calls him a liberal elite, and ruddy has flashes of candor and admits when the president threatens to ban the publication of the book, that's unwise, and he degrades the office and elevates the book as he no doubt did, and then willing to criticize the president for his intemporal ways. >> so david, just one more piece i want to play for you of what michael wolff said, because beyond mental capacity -- put that aside and let's just talk about the people around him, why they are there and if they have respect for the president. you know, i think michael wolff sort of depicts them as -- in some passages, grotesque opportunists, quite frankly, and

here's how he says the senior people around him sometimes talk about the president. listen to this. >> they say he's a moron, an idiot. actually, there was a competition to sort of get to the bottom line here of who this man is. let's remember, this man does not read, does not listen, so he's like a -- he's like the pinball just shooting off the sides. >> david, this is madness. this is madness to hear about these things. it's so deeply troubling to hear about the chaos inside the white house. >> and that's been a part of the president's problem and it's what made so many people uneasy despite the fact that the economy is booming. i have been in private conversations with people that worked in and around the white house, and they have discussed the president and his behavior in a similar fashion, so this is not something that does not happen and that we have not

heard. what is very interesting about all of this, if you take a little bit of trump out of it is often you get to the seventh year of a two-term presidency and the president no longer has his key loyalist around him and people that believe in him and the cause and the country and you fill in key posts with people that can do the job and you begin to see the leaks and people criticizing the president, and we are in year one, and we are barely at the end of year one and we are seeing this level of chaos and talking about the president out of school, and i think a lot of it has to do with the fact he did not interoffice with a transition that was prepared and did not interoffice with an extended group of people that believed in him and his cause and he has not inspired enough people around him to put a group of people around him in the west wing that would be in a way that would help him, and the people he hired to help him with

message, he goes around them on twitter and leaves them flabbergasted and unable to do the job they hired him to do. >> if the people that know you best don't respect you, you have a problem in any walk of life, but especially the united states. some are saying, i have a patriotic duty to contain the president's worse impulses. that's how they justify it. >> you are right. they feel they are doing the best they can to manage him, and it's like books like this come out and it seems like he's unmanageable. >> the baseline defense is, well, the people voted him in, true, he won the election fair and square and should not be disputed. you get what you pay for. you have somebody inexperienced and did not have his own people and did not come in with a team the way these other guys too,

people with people around them for decades, and then you have the best and worse analogy in politics, and everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. even the best, when they get in a fight, what do you see in a boxing match, their hands go down and they revert to themselves. >> i don't think he had a plan to begin with. he, himself, he has said he's very instinctive that he operates on his gut. that's how he's most comfortable. he has had periodically some good moments during the first year of his presidency and the first speech to congress and et cetera. he always follows it up by instigating chaos and it's where he's most comfortable. i don't shrink anybody, but when you are 71 years old and you won the presidency you don't change because you don't think you have to.

>> he's a chaos candidate and he will be a chaos president was said, and here we are. >> thank you, gentlemen. much more about what "fire and fury" author, michael wolff, says, he learned firsthand about the president's capacity for the job, next. that was it. now i have nicoderm cq. the nicoderm cq patch with unique extended release technology helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. it's the best thing that ever happened to me. every great why needs a great how.

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michael wolff, the author of the white house tell all "fire and fury" says 100% of the people he talked to around the president do not think the president is fit for office. >> according to your reporting, everyone around the president, senior advisers, family members, every single one of them questions his intelligence and fitness for office? >> let me put a marker in the sand here, 100% of the people around him. >> okay. here to discuss this our editor at large of the weekly standard and former aide to president bush. what do you think when you hear all the people he talked to

including the president's aides don't think he's fit? >> i think he's right. why did people like me oppose him and not vote for him and spend the last year doing that, because he's not fit for office. people are like you are frustrated the party did not take your advice. i agree with you when you got e egg saz paw rated. bannon doesn't matter. trump matters. he's president of the united states. >> listen, my feeling is, matt, that it's obviously delicate to talk about this and brings me no pleasure to talk about the chaos in the white house and some of the president's top aides think he's not fit, that's horrible, a horrible feeling. what are we to do with the

information, matt? >> of course there was a certain amount of chaos and disorder at the beginning of the presidency because the very fact that this guy, michael wolff, is walking around the west wing is evidence of the fact that some of the president's advisers did not have his best interest at heart, and i think it's fair to say, you know, for many of us that support donald trump and supported him through the election, some of the folks that were put around the president and the way the first six or eight months enveloped was disheartening. >> you think this is a problem with the advisers and aides and not the president? >> i love this talk about 100% of the people around the president don't think he's fit for office. i will not be humble. i know the president and i talked to him for years, and i think he -- >> did you talk to michael

wolff? >> i don't know who he is. let's go to the point of what he's trying to make, everybody that knows the president somehow thinks he's unfit. i deal with the president and he's perfectly fit and doing a good job. the president saw the disorder in the white house and it's the president that brought in general kelly and it's the president that said this is no way to run a railroad. he did that himself. when you criticize him for the disorder and maybe some of the chaos at the beginning of his administration you must also give him credit for solving much of that and bringing in people that saw that as a problem. >> alisyn, alisyn, two nights ago the president called his personal lawyer and had him send the cease and desist letters to wolf and bannon. it's nuts. >> it's not nuts. >> it's nuts. >> there were books written of barack obama of having a false

birth certificate and not one of the books as the president of the united states thought i will call my personal lawyer and try to get -- threaten a defamation lawsuit, which of course will never happen, and that's a way to intimidate other people from coming forward. if you are president of the united states and to let off steam and you call to the white house counsel and say it's terrible they can say these things, and the counsel will say yeah, that's terrible. before trump got rid of priebus and there were indictments, and now this week trump is not behaving like a serious president of the united states. >> let me be fast. i respect bill crystal but i say there's no question with donald trump, what you see is what you get. i have worked for a president, and bill worked for a president, and they blow hot when the doors

are closed -- let me finish. they blow hot. but when the cameras are on, they put on the powder and they smile and restrain from saying what they think, and what you get with donald trump is what chris cuomo said, behind the scenes he blows and when the cameras are on he is talking to all of you, he says the same thing and it's the authenticity you can chris siriticize but it people like about him. >> let's not pretend that michael wolff has a monopoly on this, and it's our reporting and we have heard this before. as you know, bill and matt, democrats are more often talking about this publicly and invoking things like the 25th amendment and they brought in a yale psychiatrist to help them dr. >> that's going to solve a lot of problems. >> bill, what are the republicans next move and what do republicans do with this

information? >> republicans in congress don't have much to do right now. serious people in the administration need to redouble their efforts to make sure the president doesn't cause genuine damage to the country or world, and you have to do both at once and you have to have a good iran policy, and republicans in congress who pass whatever policies they think are right and approve good judicial nominees but they should stop defending this president. >> can i jump in there? the good people at the white house are overjoyed at the fact that the president continues to keep his campaign promises. i actually believe he has saved the country from the path that it was on barack obama, but it doesn't matter what i think, these people around the country, the middle to low class americans who felt left out, they feel insrevigorated by the economic opportunity, and i

think our country was in a dark place the last eight years and it's in a better place. many are overjoyed -- >> i don't know if half of the americans. as you know the polls suggested it's a base much 30 to 35%. >> it's the same pollsters that got the polls wrong. i have n-- when you go around te country and talk to americans they feel very connected to donald trump and like his agenda. you can go through all the psychoanalysis and pwable you want, but you can't argue that he has a clear agenda and is implementing it and it's making the country, our economy, better. >> matt, thank you for your perspective, and bill crystal, thank you for yours. good to talk to you. >> thanks. overall, 2017 was a good year to get a job.

what did we see in december? did we close out with a bang or whimper? the numbers matters when it comes to jobs and you have to look inside them. let's do that next. the nicoderm cq patch with unique extended release technology helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. it's the best thing that ever happened to me. every great why needs a great how.

for december moments ago. christine romans is here with the numbers, what they mean now and relatively. what do you got? >> i got this. 148,000 net new jobs, and that showed employers slowed their pace at the end of the year, the slowest pace since the hurricanes stalled the job market in the fall, and still sitting at a 17-year low at 1.6, and a lot of economists see it as full employment level. you will start to see wages rise. where was the job creation? health care, as usual. construction and manufacturing. i saw retail jobs relatively flat, and you have 18 states raising the minimum wage this year and that might have something to do with it so watch the space on that. where do we stand overall?

i always say presidents get way too much credit and way too much blame for individual economic statistics, and 2.05 million new jobs created and that's the slowest pace in four years, something clearly to watch there. what the president does keep taking credit for, this, and we have futures up almost 100 points here on this news and maybe because the markets think the fed will not aggressively raise interest rates if you have more robust jobs growth. >> maybe it will never come down. yes, you are rational. thank you, christine romans. mean while, one year ago this week it was publicly confirmed russia interfered in the election, and now the special counsel and multiple committees are investigating the meddling and whether the trump campaign was involved.

tonight in a special report, cnn tells the story from the beginning and connecting all the threads including all we know about the infamous dossier. here's a preview. >> ten days before the inauguration of donald trump, on the same night president barack obama was giving his farewell address to the nation -- >> we have breaking news, and i want to go -- >> a team of cnn reporters broke a stunning story. >> we have all been working on this story. >> about america's new president. >> claims of russian efforts to compromise the president-elect, donald trump. >> the president-elect and outgoing president were both briefed on the dossier. >> they claim to have compromising personal and financial information about mr. trump. >> u.s. officials with direct

knowledge told cnn trump had been warned russia could have something on him, and that was on surveillance that vladimir putin was able to collect on powerful people. >> was your concern russia could have leverage over the president of the united states? >> well, yes. >> and if they can compromise somebody, there's a term for it, compromise. >> we concentrated on other major chapters, the comey firing and the tower meeting and the money, and trump's past dealings with russia in his business, and seems nearly every day a new development comes to light, and we don't know what it means and how the story will end, but special counsel mueller continues to look into the justice, and it's clear that this story is far from over.

back to you. >> okay, pam. the cnn special report, the trump russia investigation airs tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern. the author of a scathing white house tell-all defending his account saying there's deep dysfunction in the white house, and his blistering account in our "bottom line," next.

the author of this bombshell

book about the white house speaking out in an interview about his reporting and concerns inside the white house about the president, here's a taste. >> i know people would point out that in the beginning it was like every 25 or 30 minutes you would get the same three stories repeated. now it's the same three stories in every ten minutes. >> what is the suggestion there? that goes beyond saying okay the president is not an intellectual? what are you arguing there? you say, for example, he was at mar-a-lago and did not recognize life-long friends? >> i will quote steve bannon. he's lost it. >> let's get "the bottom line" from reporter and editor at large chris cillizza. what's your takeaway? do you believe michael wolff made a compelling case that the president of the united states is mentally unfit? >> i have not read the whole book but i do believe that's the most central and important

debate. a lot of the bannon stuff and what he said about don junior is salacious and interesting, but the core argument of this book is is donald trump fit, competent, well for this office? i made the case yesterday what is difficult for me is donald trump's behavior, bullying, sort of creating a story of his own life that doesn't always comport with the facts, this is nothing new to donald trumps. he has been doing this his whole life. this is a man that impersonated a young pr executive to promote donald trump's coolness to the tabloids. it's not new. i'm interested to see what the cases beyond quoting steve bannon saying that something is

broken in donald trump? >> i don't know, chris, i hear you and it is not new and feels more disturbing. seeing it in a book form all sort of condensed and hearing if you take michael wolff at his word and record that he talked to so many insiders, top staffers and aides and advisers around the president, i don't know, it feels so disturbing to hear they feel something deteriorated with his mental fitness and his ability to do the job? >> i think there's a difference between temperamentally, like what past presidents have acted like. a mental deterioration, that's the part i have not seen proven.

he clearly is someone who has a grandiose view of himself and his life and is comfortable with not comporting with established facts and somebody who can be childish, but none of that -- that is who donald trump has been for the entire time that we have known him. other than the forgetfulness, which is in michael wolff's book, other than that i don't see a lot of evidence in the way in which he acts day-to-day -- which many people take issue with -- is not different than what he acted like ten years ago. >> he is repetitive and used to tell the same stories in the 30-minute span and ten-minute span is what it is now. >> the problem politically you see people on the left of talking about the 25th amendment and going down that road and i

think it's practically and politically a mistake, and we will cover it anyway, and i think much more likely is and equally troubling is you don't have a competency issue, you have a temperament issue with somebody who is overwhelmed by the job, and he's always been the product, and now that he has a agenda that is supposed tobt product, he's at his worst on a regular basis, and that's what the rest of us will have to -- >> you have five seconds. >> he thinks he is temperamentally fit is the issue. >> who are we talking about? >> no comment. cnn "newsroom" picks up after this break. have a great weekend. dad promised he would teach me how to surf on our trip.

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good friday morning. i am poppy harlow. >> i am john berman. welcome to "fire and fury" friday, or maybe it should be called possible obstruction friday. at this minute the explosive new book raising alarming questions about the president's fitness is