President Donald Trump's deepest fear, according to a journalist who has spent years chronicling him, is the public will discover he is “quite literally stupid.”

Michael Wolff, author of “Fire and Fury” and other books on Trump, made the remark on the “Inside Trump's Head” podcast, which he co-hosts with journalist Joanna Coles. Writing on Sunday, The Daily Beast's Sarah-Jane Collins reported that Trump's fear “is so great” that, in Wolff's telling, the president's college transcripts may very well be what Russian President Vladimir Putin holds over him. Wolff added that the theory is not his alone, noting that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon raised the same possibility.

During the podcast, Wolff recounted a conversation with Bannon about the matter: “Steve Bannon and I were talking about what Putin might have on Trump, and Bannon went through all the things dismissing them. He said, what I think he has on him are his college transcripts.”

Coles pointed out that, despite numerous efforts by journalists, the public has yet to see either Trump's high school transcripts or his college transcripts. Trump began his higher education at Fordham University before transferring to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1968.

“We haven't seen his high school transcripts. We haven't seen either of his college transcripts,” Coles told Wolff. “They have been so successful in locking that stuff down. And, you know, if they were good, he would have floated them out there immediately.”

Wolff went further: “I think top of his list, top of the things that plagues him is being seen as stupid, for one reason: Because he is stupid.”

Coles added that the purpose of the speculation is to understand Trump, not to shame him over potential intellectual deficiencies. “We should say that the point of going through these fears is to understand why he is as he is, because actually, he's a man that's been created through his fears,” she said.

Trump has often pointed to his own intelligence when boasting to voters. In September, after he was criticized for not supporting regulations on artificial intelligence, he cited his brain as the reason voters need not worry.

“The only control or ‘guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “and the USA has that, in spades!”

Also in September, Wolff argued — as AlterNet reported — that Trump's intellectual insecurities explain why he repeatedly hires incompetent people to staff his administration: so that he will not feel inferior to them.

“Speaking on the Inside Trump's Head podcast, Trump biographer Michael Wolff said, ‘This is not a secret,'” The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster reported at the time, noting that Wolff described Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as “a... blithering incompetent... yes-man, a suck-up, a man who... knows nothing, and no logic would say he would know enough to run the military-industrial complex.”

Wolff added that Hegseth's “primary qualification is that he was... a weekend television co-host. So what in the name of God would he know about running... the United States military... at a moment... in which we are in the middle of a, basically, a revolution in terms of munitions, logistics, and supply.”

“Pete Hegseth is in this job because Donald Trump is intimidated by competence,” Wolff continued. “It's not just that he doesn't want to be bossed by people; it's that he can't deal with people who know things because—for the obvious reason—because he doesn't know things.”

In August, Wolff also said that Trump “filled the administration of the second term with unqualified people, morons of one variety or another, because he can't have people who are clearly smarter than he is.”

The White House has pushed back on questions about Trump's mental fitness. When AlterNet reached out to the White House in May regarding a letter signed by three dozen health professionals alleging that Trump is mentally incompetent, a spokesperson attacked the credibility of the signatories.

“If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor,” Davis Ingle told AlterNet. “President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history and any so-called medical professionals engaging in armchair diagnosis or false speculation for political purposes are clearly breaking the Hippocratic Oath they've sworn to.”

This article was originally published by Alternet.