Donald Trump has admitted he had no idea how “important” a president really is in a rather revealing interview on Tuesday.
Speaking to Sean Hannity on his Fox News show, the former US president – who left office in January 2021 – suggested he expected state officials to run the country instead, rather than him.
While criticising Joe Biden, Trump said: “We need a president that’s respected. I have never realised how important, frankly – and it is a horrible thing to say – how important a president, the head of this country is. I though it would maybe run through bureaucracy, it doesn’t. You need somebody up there that they are going to respect.”
Trump’s comments followed a damning assessment of how Biden has coped with the escalating Afghanistan crisis – the Taliban swept through the country just after the White House ordered US troops to withdraw.
He said Biden’s behaviour was “the greatest embarrassment in the history of our country” – even though Trump had actually signed a deal with the Taliban to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan in February 2020.
This is an agreement which Biden has mostly upheld, it has simply been delayed.
Trump’s remarks also follow claims that circulated throughout his presidency that he did not even bother reading his daily intelligence briefs.
The New York Times claimed the then-president even ignored his briefings warning him about the threat the novel coronavirus posed to the US.
Officials allegedly told the newspaper that Trump would rather receive information from conservative media and friends.
Trump’s four years in office left deep divisions in the States and he developed a massive following in this short time.
He has consistently contested his loss in the November 2020 election to Democrat Biden, and still maintains that the public vote was rigged.
Trump’s claims even prompted his supporters to violently overrun the Capitol on January 6 in a bid to disrupt the Electoral College vote count.
The Republican did not confirm if he was going to run for the presidency in 2024, due to “extremely complicated and unbelievably stupid” campaign finance laws.
He did tell well-known Republican Hannity: “I think you will be happy and a lot of our friends will be happy.”