Donald Trump’s mental health questioned by former right-hand man Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, predicted the 25th Amendment could be used to remove the president, according to author Michael Wolff in his new book ‘Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House’.

The comments came after the president blamed both sides for racial violence after an anti-fascist protester was murdered by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.

Mr Wolff writes: “The debate, as Bannon put it, was not about whether the president’s situation was bad, but whether it was 25th-Amendment bad.”

The 25th Amendment details the order of succession if a president or vice president resigns, dies, or is removed from office.

It also details how a president can be removed from power if he is deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” by the vice president and cabinet. This includes mental fitness to serve.

The author claims Mr Bannon openly placed odds on Mr Trump surviving his four-year presidential term, giving him a 33.3 percent chance each of impeachment, survival, or being forced out “in the wake of a threat by the cabinet to act on the 25th Amendment”.

Mr Bannon reportedly said: “He’s not going to make it. He’s lost his stuff.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Thursday any questioning of Mr Trump’s mental health was “disgraceful and laughable”, hailing him as an “incredibly strong and good leader”.

Ms Sanders said the American people “probably could care less about a book full of lying” and would prefer to focus on key political issues.

She added: “I don’t think they really care about some trash that an author that no one had ever heard of until today or a fired employee wants to peddle.”

Lawyers representing the president have threatened to begin legal proceedings to block publication of ‘Fire and Fury’, demanding Mr Wolff and his publishers, Henry Holt and Co., “immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination”.

The publisher responding by bringing the publication date forward from its planned release of January 9, to today, January 5.

The book also quotes Mr Bannon’s claim that the president lied when he claimed he did not meet Russian officials during his election campaign in 2016.

Donald Jr., the president’s eldest son, has admitted meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya, a self-described “Russian government attorney”, along with campaign chairman Paul Manafort and advisor Jared Kushner, at Trump Tower in 2016.

The president denies he met with Ms Veselnitskaya. However Mr Bannon is quoted as saying “the chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero”, using a term meaning “junior Moscow officers”.

He also reportedly described Donald Jr. as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” in taking the meeting in the first place.

Mr Trump has strongly denied allegations of collusion.

Mr Wolff claims he was given unprecedented access to the Trump Administration to write his book, and had a “semi-permanent presence” in the West Wing, where he also conducted over 200 interviews for his book, including with Mr Trump himself.

The White House denies the author ever interviewed the president, while Mr Trump tweeted claims Mr Wolff had “zero access” while writing his explosive tome.