Investigative journalist and Trump expert: The president 'really believes he's superior to the rest of us'

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, reporter and researcher David Cay Johnston said during an MSNBC panel discussion Sunday that the president's superiority isn't a recent occurrence. Apparently, the president has felt everyone is below him for quite some time.

When it came to discussing Bob Woodard's new book, Johnston opened up about his personal experience in dealing with the man.

"Woodward's book basically confirms everything I wrote about in my 2016 book, The Making of Donald Trump," Johnston said. "He's appallingly ignorant, lies all the time, he's the head of a crime family, and Donald really believes that he is superior to the rest of us."

Johnston said that there is a reason that Trump frequently attack's people's intelligence or calls them "dumb."

"Because he believes we're all idiots and fools and he alone is the person competent to run the country, which should help us to understand how totally incapable he is of carrying out the job and why so many people talked to Woodward," he said.

Host Ayman Mohyeldin noted that Trump dismissed the book because the comments don't sound like him. Johnston called it nonsense, saying it sounded exactly like Trump.

The panel also spoke about the interview with Omarosa Manigault-Newman on the network Sunday, in which she claimed the use of the #TFA hashtag was frequently used in text conversations in the White House. The acronym stands for "Twenty-Fifth Amendment," something an anonymous New York Times op-ed writer said was discussed among cabinet members. Johnston said that it didn't make sense for anyone to try to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Watch the panel below: