Trump lashes out at 'unstable' niece whose book included devastating psychological profile of him

President complains about series of books by people close to him that portray him as incompetent, paranoid and cruel

Donald Trump has angrily hit out at his niece Mary, weeks after she published a book providing a devastating portrait of the president as a psychologically-damaged liar and cheat.

Mary Trump's book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, refers to her uncle as a "monster" who was bullied by his own father, who paid a classmate to take his exams for him, and who never recovered from being humiliated as a child.

On Saturday morning, while flying to Louisiana to inspect damage caused by Hurricane Laura, the president tweeted: "About the only way a person is able to write a book on me is if they agree that it will contain as much bad "stuff" as possible, much of which is lies. It's like getting a job with CNN or MSDNC and saying that "President Trump is great." You have ZERO chance. FAKE NEWS!

"Even whether it's dumb warmongers like John Bolton, social pretenders like Bob Woodward, who never has anything good to say, or an unstable niece, who was now rightfully shunned, scorned and mocked her entire life, and never even liked by her own very kind & caring grandfather!"

The vicious broadside against his niece appears to tally with behaviours attributed to the president by Ms Trump, a clinical psychologist. She claims that he has never recovered from the humiliation of having mashed potatoes dumped on his head by his older brother as a child.

She writes: "It was the first time Donald had been humiliated by someone he even then believed to be beneath him. He hadn't understood that humiliation was a weapon that could be wielded by only one person in a fight.

"From then on, he would never allow himself to feel that feeling again. From them on, he would wield the weapon, never be at the sharp end of it."

Ms Trump describes her uncle as a narcissist for whom "nothing is ever enough" in a book which was published in July despite efforts by the White House to block it. It sold almost a million copies on its first day.

She says the future-president learned to be cruel and ruthless by watching his older brother Fred Jr – Mary Trump's father – driven to alcoholism and an early death by the demands of their father,

In August Ms Trump followed up by releasing audio of Maryanne Trump Barry – her aunt and Donald Trump's sister – in which she accuses him of being cruel and a liar.

Her book was the latest in a series of excoriating memoirs either written by people close to the president – like John Bolton, Omarosa Manigault Newman and the as-yet-unidentified "Anonymous" – or quoting them extensively, including works by Bob Woodward and Michael Wolff.

These have portrayed him as incompetent, interested only in his own re-election, paranoid and cruel.