One of President Trump’s biographers said early Monday that he doesn’t believe Trump is a strategic thinker when it comes to his social media attacks on news outlets.

Tim O’Brien, who authored the 2005 book “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald,” said on CNN’s "New Day" that Trump’s use of social media isn’t "strategically driven" and largely comes from a sense of self-preservation.

“I think there’s usually two ways of understanding what motivates what he does: Either self-preservation or self-aggrandizement,” O’Brien said. "I think in this case a lot of this is coming out of self-preservation."

ADVERTISEMENT

Trump on Sunday posted a doctored video of himself from a 2007 appearance at WWE's Wrestlemania beating up a figure with the CNN logo superimposed over their head and had previously attacked “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski on Twitter last week. He faced major backlash from journalists and politicians for both posts.

O'Brien said on Monday that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is hanging over Trump and is likely driving a lot of his decisions, saying it “cuts to core issues in Trumplandia.”

“I don’t think it’s necessarily even collusion or obstruction that preoccupies him,” O’Brien said. “It’s the money trail and what it might say about his business relationships and his past financial dealings.”