When we put people in that were great, and we put people in that weren't.
I now know Washington probably better than anybody.
I know the good ones and the bad ones, and we will have really great, strong people.
I already know who they are, but we will have really great, strong people.
>> Okay, In 2016, you said that,
I'm going to surround myself with only the best and most serious people.
>> Yeah, and, while I was prepping for this,
I was thinking about some of the people in the administration.
Bret Baier, we'll hear from him in a second talking about some of the ones that
are running against him and others, but Tom Price at HHS had to resign,
took $900,000.
Scott Pruitt all kinds of travel, and he had to resign,
travel and other violations.
Michael Flynn, we know he pleaded guilty to lying, had to be pardoned.
Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Rob Porter, worked in the White House,
had abused ex wives and had to leave the White House.
George Papadopoulos, Wilbur Ross, who had fraud, millions and
dollars of fraud in business outside the White House, still answering for it.
Steve Bannon we didn't even get to Bill Shine, who was at Fox News and
at the time when all of those sexual harassment allegations were there,
the list just goes on and on.
And Bret Baer has more.
>> Your vice president, Mike Pence is running against you.
Your Ambassador of the United Nations, Nikki Haley, she's running against you.
Your former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he's not supporting you.
You mentioned National Security Adviser John Bolton,
he's not supporting you either.
You mentioned Attorney General Bill Barr, says you shouldn't be president again,
calls you the consummate, narcissist, and troubled man.
You recently called and Barr a gutless pig.
Your second defense secretary is not supporting you, called you irresponsible.
This week, you and your White House called your White House Chief of
Staff John Kelly, weak and ineffective and born with a very small brain.
You called your acting White House Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, a born loser.
You called your first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, dumb as a rock.
And your first defense secretary, James Mattis,
the world's most overrated general.
You called your White House press secretary, Kayla Kennedy, milk, toast.
And multiple times you've referred to your transportation secretary,
Elaine Chao as Mitch McConnell's China loving wife.
So why did you hire all of them in the first place?
>> I hired ten to one that were fantastic.
>> Damn, [LAUGH].
That was unbelievable.
He just went through a list of people, and actually,
some of the people in there were probably the finest people in his administration.
I mean, wow.
>> Yeah, so, look, I've been saying this for years.
If you were gonna hire the greatest people,
why did you hire all these people that you now call losers?
I started saying that about a year into his administration because he'd already
fired so many people.
And after he fires them, he said, pig really getting mad.
I hate him.
Tiny little brain, right?
Well, then why don't you hire the tiny little brain guy?
What you couldn't tell on the job interview?
What does that make you? I guess that makes you a tinier little
brain in it, okay?
And this is the guy who said, I'm amazing at business.
I'm the best manager.
Do you look like the best manager?
I mean, that's unreal.
Look, from time to time, you'll have things that go sideways.
It happens, right?
It happens in other administrations, too, and you got to let go of some people.
This is unlike any other administration.
I've been covering politics now, unfortunately, for
a quarter of a century, okay?
And I've gone through all these different administrations, and
they had their little hiccups here and there.
Look, things with Trump are so crazy that any one of these would
have been the biggest scandal in another administration.
If Barack Obama had a giant falling out with Eric Holder,
his attorney general, and they called him a pig afterwards, and
Holder said Obama's like a petulant child and definitely broke the law.
I mean, it would be heads exploding.
People would talk about that for decades.
But with Trump, there's dozens and dozens of these.
So which one do you keep up with?
No, there's no way around it, either, well, no, there's no either.
Even by his own standards, Trump is the world's worst manager.
>> There's no question about that.
And also, you wouldn't have a president before Trump saying that he only has
the best people, right?
They don't talk about it.
They just go ahead and they do the business of the country.
Bret Baier went on.
Or it wasn't Bret Baier who went on, so you talked about his management skills and
Trump's management skills.
So too did Chris Christie, a former friend, a former enemy,
then a former friend, and now an opponent in the 2024 Republican primary.
Here's Chris Christie.
>> Well, look, you get, Cenk, I stood on the stage in 2016 and
heard Donald Trump say he would only hire the very, very best people,
and he would know how to manage them.
But think about what happens here.
Here's what he says about Rex Tillerson when he gets in, he says,
he's the embodiment of the American dream, former CEO of ExxonMobil.
He said when he left he was what he said about him, he's dumb as a rock and
lazy as hell.
About general Mattis four Star general Mad Dog Mattis, he said he was
our very best general and that he was the closest thing we had to Patton.
When he left, he said he was the most overrated general in American history.
Now, look, either Donald Trump, if you believe what he said when they left, that
means he didn't pick the very best people and doesn't know how to pick personnel.
If you believe what about them, what he said at the beginning, the great stuff,
then this guy is the worst manager in the history of the American presidency.
>> Who rates generals?
That's what I want to know.
Where are they being overrated these generals?
Again, I mean, this is Chris Christie,
who knows him pretty well, talking about exactly what we're talking about.
>> Yeah, now, I'm in a fantasy armed forces league.
Yeah, and I had Mattis in the second round, but when Trump hyped him up,
I had to panic, and I got him in the rap in the first round, right?
>> Well, I got Petraeus, and it killed me.
>> Well, I don't blame you.
Okay, so listen guys, on Chris Christie, he starts the talking points.
This is a new thing, okay?
So that was before the Brett Baier interview.
Look, let's be honest.
Mainstream media and Chris Christie are tag teaming.
Not mainstream media,
corporate media, because right wing media is also involved, okay?
They're all tag teaming against Trump.
Let's keep it real.
And now they're right to,
they're finally saying the things they should have said years ago, right?
But Chris Christie was his lap dog earlier,
slobbering around on the set behind him when he was running in 2016 and
was bitter that he didn't get picked in the administration, etc, etc.
So I'm giving you all the context, and Chris Christie is put up by corporate
donors, etc, all the context, and being super fair and honest about it.
Now, having said that, Christie's actually tough.
So he goes and goes, I don't know why these idiots aren't saying it.
Hey, he fired everyone, and then he called them idiots afterwards.
So who's the idiot who hired them, right?
It's such an obvious point.
And like I said, we've been making it on the Young troops for now,
maybe five years straight at least, right?
But once Christie says it, it then cascades throughout the media and
eventually gets to Baier asking Trump about it.
And then he looks bad, and he looks bad in front of a Fox News audience.
Look, I think Chris Christie now has gone from zero to a little bit of a chance,
because he's the only one who's actually fighting Trump.
>> Well, people are saying he's the only Republican in the race, clear,
old fashioned Republican or old fashioned by meeting 2014.
And so I think that's what can help him.
Clearly, he's a complicated guy in the way he's perceived.
Also the way he's running.
He's going after Ron DeSantis harder than he's going after Trump.
But to what you were saying, Cenk, is all you have to do is say something about
Trump, and it makes these ripples, and everybody's paying attention to it.
So that's why people are paying attention to Chris Christie.
For his part, Baier was saying that this was all happening.
Trump is saying the only reason that people are actually going after him now
is to make money.
He cited Alyssa Farah joining The View, the television show, and
Bill Barr writing a book.
Again, it's kind of weak sauce.
He also, Brett Baier pointed out a tweet from DeSantis PAC spokesman Steve Cortes
after Trump posted about John Kelly, Cortes said, very serious question,
who would work for Trump?
Goes to what we were saying about who would represent Trump, right?
If he wins, what people of gravity and substance would volunteer to work for
his administration knowing how viciously he's
attacked nearly all his former senior staffers.
He's spelled viciously like viscously.
Again, we have angel and angle, some spelling issues in the former
administration, but he's saying that Trump said, well,
I didn't give Cortes what he wanted, so he jumped ship.
Again, you're seeing these Trump excusing this,
but real points being made, who would honestly work in a Trump administration?
But we know who would.
>> Yeah, he's gonna pick goons and mafiosos, etc,
because no real person now is gonna volunteer for this.
I mean, for so long, they were like lamps to the slaughter.
They'd all go in thinking, no, no, I know he looks crazy in public, but privately,
he's probably a genius.
And then they get in and they're like, my God, he's worse than he is in public.
Total, utter lunatic, and they run with their hair on fire.
And yet everybody but back when he was president, they wanted that power of fame.
That's the one thing I'll agree with Trump on.
All those people that are now all over TV saying, yeah,
I had my problems with Trump, no, you didn't.
When he was president, you loved it, and you milked it for power and
fame and money.
>> And that happens in every administration, too.
People who worked in the Bush administration wrote books
that were critical of Bush.
People who worked in the Carter administration, same thing.
That's what happens.
I cut you off.
But I think before we leave this, we should give 25 seconds to Brett Baier and
what it means that he gave this interview what it says about Fox.
It was pretty brave interview within his building more than it was in the world.
He did what he should do.
Journalists should push back against the truth on Trump.
It's never too late to start.
And he did it.
>> Yeah, and I got to say, I thought Trump was more respectful of Baier than he was
of Kaitlan Collins, and it might have to do with the fact that he was on Fox, and
it might have to do with the fact that he's a white male, right?
As opposed to Kaitlan Collins, who's a woman, and he loves cutting women off.
He tried to cut off Baier a couple of times, but he backed off, and
let Baier say these long and damaging questions against them.
But yes, look,
I don't think that the news people on Fox News are straight news people.
I think they're still involved in propaganda for the Republican Party.
And he did say throughout the interview, your defenses are fair, right?
>> I mean, he's not a hero, but he did something we don't see people do.
And I think that's important.
>> Yeah, no, no, but that's a long wind up, too, I'll take it.
And that's a lot better than almost every everyone else on Fox News.
And he asked them some really hard questions that Trump had terrible
answers for.
So credit where credit is due, and in this case, Bret Baier earned.
>> Yeah, our friend Jim Abela, who Cenk and I know,
wrote a piece today in Barrett's News service about just that people,
the journalists that should push back.
It's Jim Abela, ABC Twitter, I urge you to do it not just because he's a friend, but
it's a great article about it.