Susan Collins: 'No Reason To Be Concerned' About Trump's Mental State
WASHINGTON ― Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) says she does not share worries about President Donald Trump’s mental state.
Recent Trump comments and actions have led some to question whether he possesses the mental stability to serve as president.
The New York Times reported that Trump has been “raising the prospect with allies that it may not have been him” on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about groping women ― even though he previously apologized for his comments in it. Also according to the Times, Trump has again questioned the authenticity of ex-President Barack Obama’s birth certificate in closed-door conversations with senators, even though he grudgingly acknowledged its validity while campaigning for the White House last year.
Trump’s tweets this week, in particular, have prompted the questions about his mental health. The president on Tuesday retweeted incendiary and misleading anti-Muslim videos posted by a far-right British group, earning a rare rebuke from UK Prime Minister Theresa May.
“Something is unleashed with him lately,” the Times’ Maggie Haberman said Wednesday on CNN, adding that Trump seemed a “little unmoored.”
But Collins, who last year said she wouldn’t be voting for Trump and who has often counseled him to moderate his words, said she did not have the impression that something was amiss in recent conversations with him about the GOP tax bill.
“My conversations with the president recently have given me no reason to be concerned in that regard,” Collins said at a Thursday breakfast in Washington sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.
“But,” she added, “do I think that it’s helpful that he puts out racist, conspiracy theories, puts out a tweet of an anti-Muslim video that turns out to not even be accurate? No, I do not, and I do not hesitate to criticize the president when he does that.”
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
