The New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt is selling a new book, and was on Morning Joe to talk about it. He focused on Trump chief of state Gen. John Kelly.
"So when Kelly came in as chief of staff, he thought that the problem around Trump was that he was not staffed properly and they needed to create a process around him, and that's what the chaos of the first six months of the administration was about," he said.
"But when Kelly comes in as chief of staff, what he realizes is that the problem is not just the fact that there's not a process and that he's not being staffed as well as he could, but that Trump himself was the problem, that Trump was far dumber and immoral and ignorant and lazy than he ever thought he was. And within a few days, he becomes terrified because here he is, the top staffer to the president of the United States, and he's realizing that the president of the United States is far more limited and potentially dangerous than he ever thought, and at that point, there was no one else to call.
"It was just him and trump, and he basically spends the next 18 months trying to manage Trump as much as he could. And no issue for Kelly sort of typified the shortcomings of Trump and the potential dangers that he presented then to North Korea."
Joe Scarborough brought up how shallow and superficial Trump was about selecting people for important positions.
"I remember during the transition talking to him, and he was talking about how Rex Tillerson was big and he looked like the role. And he loved Mattis because of his nickname, Mad Dog. He didn't like Petraeus because he thought Petraeus worked out too much. He was too drawn in, he weighed the same in high school that he weighed when Trump was talking to him, and no secretary of state could be that drawn. I'm serious," Scarborough said.
"He was obsessed with how much he worked out and thought that somehow it didn't look manly enough, like 'you need to not care so much,' " Mika Brzezinski said.
"Right. And so all of this leads up of course to a conversation, and this is what the general talked about all of this with you. It led to a conversation about Nikki Haley, why he didn't want Nikki Haley to be secretary of state or vice president," Schmidt said.
In case you care, he thought her complexion was too blotchy.
