Former President Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Matthews said Wednesday that she expects a hypothetical second term for Trump to lack a “competent and experienced” aide.
Instead, he said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta that the presumptive Republican nominee is surrounded by supporters who are trying to please him without offering any constructive guidance. He said he expected to be surrounded.
“I’m very concerned because I think the ability and the experience will be useless,” Matthews said, citing a recent interview with Trump in Time magazine.
She added, “He says in this article that he wants to put his supporters in these positions of power, but the litmus test for securing the job is that the 2020 election was stolen from him.” It’s up to you to believe it or not.”
Matthews said that during President Trump’s first term, career civil servants and military personnel, including retired General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, were appointed to key positions within the administration and staff. He pointed out that it was. Trump fired him days after Biden won the 2020 election.
“It’s alarming to think he’s not going to have people of good character in place to rebuild this project. There’s not going to be a John Kerry or a Mark Espers to push him back. Instead, it will be a group of ‘yes’ men and women who will do and say whatever they want,” Matthews added.
Matthews said he is concerned that Trump could push through what he views as bad policy without getting the expert advice that all presidents need.
“In the previous administration, I think we were able to dissuade him from a lot of bad policies by saying, ‘Well, this might hurt his re-election chances.’ If he was elected president again. , next time it won’t be a concern,” Matthews said.
“So I don’t think you can really steer him away from some of the bad policies like family separation that we saw during his first term. He wanted to do that during his first term. So I think we’ll move forward with that.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson criticized Matthews in an emailed statement, saying, “Only someone like her would think it would be a good idea to hire an enemy to subvert the will of the American people to serve in government.” Stated.
Recent reports suggest that the former president and his team are poised to add even more full-throated supporters of Trumpism to a possible second administration.
Conservative groups in Washington, D.C., are already working to identify potential talent for the second Trump administration, most notably former Trump White House staffers Paul Dunnes and Spencer Chretien. This is the “Project 2025” initiative of the Heritage Foundation, led by .
This initiative is a collection of policy proposals for large-scale restructuring of the executive branch. The plan would hire tens of thousands of conservatives to replace current federal civil servants.
But the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from outside groups that submit policy and personnel proposals during the campaign, instead allowing Trump himself to make final decisions on senior leadership and other decisions when the time comes. He insisted that he would give up.
—Updated at 3:43 p.m.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
