White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham used language "like we expect out of North Korea" when she said ex-chief of staff John Kelly wasn't prepared to work for someone with President Donald Trump's "genius," ex-press secretary Joe Lockhart said Monday.
"It shows that there's an audience of only one for all of these people," Lockhart, who served under former President Bill Clinton, commented on CNN's "New Day."
"They only care about the president. They don't care about the truth or what anyone else thinks."
Grisham's comments came after Kelly told a political summit hosted by the Washington Examiner he'd warned the president not to hire a "yes man, someone who won't tell you the truth," becuase that would lead to impeachment.
Trump claimed that Kelly had not told him that, and Grisham told The New York Times' Annie Karni that Kelly was "was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president."
Lockhart, now a CNN political commentator, said the likelihood that he would have used the language Grisham used while he was working for Clinton is "exactly zero."
"The really staggering thing about what John Kelly said was, Mr. President, left to your own devices you'll be doing something criminal or impeachable," said Lockhart.
He also pointed out that Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, along with Michael Cohen, the attorney for the Trump Organization, are both behind bars, and the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is under criminal investigation.
"The thing that ties all this together is that they're all working at the direction of Donald Trump," Lockhart said. "Kelly was right. He needed someone there to keep him from committing crimes."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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