WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump said during an interview aired Sunday evening that he doesn’t “trust everybody” in the White House, but that he was “comfortable” in the leadership role after almost two turbulent years in office.
His comment came in response to a television interview given last week by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, in which she said there are people who work in the White House she can’t trust.
“I feel the same way,” Trump told CBS’s “60 Minutes” news programme on Sunday; he went on to say he was “guarded.”
“I’m not a baby. It’s a tough business. This … is a vicious place. Washington DC is a vicious, vicious place. The attacks, the bad mouthing, the speaking behind your back. –but– you know, and in my way, I feel very comfortable here.”
The president went on in the interview to call reports of chaos in the White House “fake news,” insisting he has “people on standby” to join the administration.
“I have people now on standby that will be phenomenal that will come into the administration,” Trump said. “They’ll be phenomenal.”
Correspondent Leslie Stahl, who conducted the interview, pointed out that Trump’s administration has seen record levels of turnover. “More people are gonna go?” she asked.
“At some point, everybody leaves,” Trump replied. “People leave. That’s Washington.”
Trump declined to say whether Defence Secretary James Mattis is going to exit, but said he’s “sort of a Democrat.”
Multiple news outlets have reported that Trump has been weighing potential replacements for Mattis in recent weeks.
Veteran American journalist Bob Woodward in his new book “Fear: Trump in the White House,” which was released in July, reported on a chaotic White House in which staffers sometimes seek to stave off Trump’s impulses and regularly bad-mouth the president behind closed doors.
Trump and multiple administration officials have denied the accounts in the book, though Woodward has insisted he can substantiate them with documents and hours of recorded interviews.
