Fox’s Hume: Trump chief of staff rejections ‘like the guy who couldn’t get a date for the prom’
Fox News’s Brit Hume on Sunday said that President Trump’s rejections by several White House chief of staff candidates was similar to a “guy who couldn’t get a date for the prom.”
Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, on Friday took the chief of staff position on an acting basis after a number of high-profile candidates, including Vice Presiden Pence’s chief of staff and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), said they were not interested in the post.
{mosads}During a panel discussion on “Fox News Sunday,” Fox News anchor Chris Wallace asked Hume if the situation was “getting a little embarrassing” for Trump.
Hume, a former ABC White House correspondent and anchor who serves as a senior political analyst for Fox News, noted that Trump was “like the guy who couldn’t get a date for the prom” but that Mulvaney was ultimately a “good choice” for the president.
“He was like the guy who couldn’t get a date for the prom and he finally got Mulvaney, who was already on board to join in,” replied Hume. “But Mulvaney is a good choice. He’s a very able guy, seasoned and experience, knows the issues, knows the policies, knows the government.”
Wallace noted that Mulvaney will likely be more open to interviews than outgoing chief of staff John Kelly, who will be leaving the position at the end of the year after 17 months.
Hume agreed with Wallace, saying that Kelly generally was not interested in television appearances, while noting the president really needs a chief of staff.
“[Kelly] wasn’t interested,” Hume agreed. “I would add this: There’s some talk that Trump doesn’t need a chief of staff, he should be his own, that is really nonsense because Trump needs help from people who really know this town, know its ways, know the details, know the issues, and he has been, at important times, willing to accept advice from those people to his benefit.”
The perspective on Mulvaney comes as video surfaced over the weekend from 2016 showing the former South Carolina congressman calling Trump “terrible human being.”
“Yes, I’m supporting Donald Trump,” Mulvaney says in the video obtained by The Daily Beast. “I’m doing so as enthusiastically as I can, given the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being, but the choice on the other side is just as bad.”
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.