Joe Scarborough: Trump confidants believe president has ‘early stage dementia’ — but Washington Post wouldn’t print it

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough thanked author Michael Wolff for opening a wider discussion into President Donald Trump's apparent mental decline.

The "Morning Joe" host has been trying to sound the alarm about the president, whom he's known for years, but he said political and journalistic norms had kept the topic buried.

"I've written twice in my column a quote about one of the people closest to Donald Trump during the campaign saying he's got early stage of dementia," Scarborough said. "He repeats the same stories over and over again. His father had it, and it's getting worse, and not a single person who works for him doesn't know it. He didn't think he was going to win. Twice the Washington Post would not let me put that in my column. I salute them for having a high bar, but we're at this moment, and until your book came out, this was something we were not allowed to speak about."

Wolff, whose new book Fire and Fury contains numerous examples of Trump associates questioning the president's fitness for office, said White House staffers are alarmed by his tweets -- whether or not they'll admit it to reporters.

"Everybody sees the president's tweets," Wolff told MSNBC. "The whole White House goes into a spasm when he tweets."

He said White House officials like chief of staff John Kelly try to ignore them and focus on their own jobs, which often involve covering up for the president's weaknesses.

"Everybody in this White House -- and I keep saying this, there's 100 percent because it is 100 percent of the people closest to the president, to Donald Trump, believe that there is something wrong here, something fundamentally wrong, something that scares them," Wolff said.

The author said White House staffers feel no loyalty toward the president, and many of them hate one another, but they feel duty-bound to remain on the job.

"As a matter of fact, if there is any reason they stay in the White House now, it's because they're scared (and) they believe they have a responsibility to the American people," Wolff said.