The Genius Bar: After several days getting pummeled about his mental and intellectual capability to be President, Donald Trump yesterday declared himself “a very stable genius.”

The mental competence issue had the President in a Twitter rage. “Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.”

We’ll stop here to point out that Russian collusion has not been proven to be a hoax, or anything else. There’s no verdict out of the many investigations. Ronald Reagan was in the early stages of dementia during his presidency.

Trump’s series of three tweets continued, “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”

The Proper President: President Trump again insisted he is not under investigation by the special counsel investigating Russian influence on the 2016 election.

“Everything I’ve done is 100 percent proper,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Camp David. Asked about pressuring Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia inquiry, Trump said, “That is what I do, is I do things proper.”

Three veteran lawyers writing in The NY Times conclude otherwise, that a series of events shows that Trump has attempted to obstruct Justice. On the Sessions matter, they say the President’s plea for the attorney general’s protection “shows that from the outset the president was concerned that he needed protection from the impact of any investigation.”

They say Trump’s shifting reasons for firing FBI Director James Comey “matters because attempts to cover up the truth are classic indicators of a culpable state of mind under the obstruction statutes.”

And on the issue of the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, “If the president knowingly caused his son to make a false statement to interfere with the investigations or cover up the facts, that alone could constitute obstruction of justice.”

Weather Report: The arctic cold lingering over the eastern third of the country will begin to dissipate over the next few days. In the meantime, The National Weather Service reports dangerous wind chills as much as 25-40 degrees below zero.

It’s a balmy 29 degrees in Bismarck, ND; Duluth, 12; Chicago, 15; Buffalo, 1; Staatsburg, NY, -6; New York City, 5; Burlington, Vt., -19; Boston, -2; Bangor, Me., -8.

The Obit Page: The durable sitcom actor Jerry Van Dyke, brother of Dick Van Dyke, has died at age 86. Van Dyke had a run of nine years on the show “Coach,” playing an assistant football coach opposite Craig Nelson. Among other sitcoms, he also appeared on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Love, American Style,” and “Fantasy Island.”

  He had the misfortune to be cast in the 1965 “My Mother the Car,” a show about a man whose mother is reincarnated as an antique car. His career survived it. — Astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon, commanded the first space shuttle mission, and became the first person to fly in space six times, died at home in Houston at age 87.

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