'Very senior' anonymous ex-Trump official deems him 'lethally incompetent': book

A new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, "explores how Donald Trump remade the Republican Party in his own image—and the wreckage he's left in his wake," according to its summary.

Speaking with the veteran journalist Tuesday, MSNBC's The ReidOut host Joy Reid notes the book includes a quote from a former Trump official, saying, "He lacks any shred of human decency, humility or caring. He is morally bankrupt, breathtakingly dishonest, lethally incompetent, and stunningly ignorant of virtually anything related to governing, history, geography, human events or world affairs. He is a traitor and a malignancy in our nation and represents a clear and present danger to our democracy and the rule of law."

Reid goes on to mention the 25th Amendment —which Brookings notes was originally meant "to provide for the orderly transfer of power when the president dies, resigns or is incapacitated — asking Karl, "Is Donald Trump fully there mentally?"

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He replied, "It was the people that were closest to him that were talking about whether or not they needed to remove him from office because he was mentally unstable, mentally unable to carry out the duties of the president. And that is Pompeo and Mnuchin. They have both denied it. There is sworn testimony acknowledging those conversations did happen. They didn't go very far. Frankly, as he started to have people resign from the cabinet, there are fewer people in the cabinet to vote for it. But they were talking about it.

Karl continued, "And it's not just those 25th amendment conversations. I mean, you read that statement from an anonymous staffer. I think it's a very important statement. This was something that was given to me by the person who wrote it, and he wrote it right after all the details came out about the classified documents. This is a very senior official who spent day in and day out with Donald Trump for over a year in the West Wing. I can't give any further details to who it was, but there was a lot of attention about anonymous, and we later learned — it was Miles Taylor who worked at the department of homeland security. I will tell you this is somebody who is more senior and spent a lot more time around Donald Trump who said those words about him, because he saw first-hand how he had operated and was conveying this to me, didn't want to go public. Worried about the retribution we talked about. This is not somebody who has been out there publicly taking on the president, worried about retribution against the family, but deeply concerned about what a second Trump White House would look like."

Watch the video below or at this link.