Donald Trump, who once vowed to hire only the “best” people if elected president, now admits that’s not how it turned out.
“Your critics say you had plenty of personnel mistakes,” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said during an interview that aired on Sunday.
“No, of course, but everybody does,” he said, then deflected. “Obama had. What about Biden? Look at the people running this Biden thing. The difference is I fire people.”
Trump indeed fired plenty of people during a chaotic administration that saw a higher level of turnover in senior- and Cabinet-level positions than any of his predecessors. For example, just three Cabinet secretaries turned over under President Barack Obama over four years compared to 14 under Trump, according to a Brookings Institute tracker.
“How do you know, if you get back in, you don’t have a network of people around you working against you?” Bartiromo asked.
“I will,” he admitted. “And so will anybody else that gets in as a Republican, these people are sick, these are sick people.”
Trump once claimed he would hire only “the best and most serious people,” but ultimately fired and attacked many of those very same people, including William Barr (attorney general), Jeff Sessions (attorney general), Rex Tillerson (secretary of state), James Mattis (defence secretary) John Bolton (national security adviser), H.R. McMaster (national security adviser) John Kelly (homeland security secretary and White House chief of staff), Mike Pence (vice president) and Kayleigh McEnany (press secretary), among others.
See more of his discussion with Bartiromo below: