The White House could help stem some of the reports of chaos by bringing in more people who were supportive of President Donald Trump from the beginning, former Trump campaign senior adviser Michael Caputo said Wednesday, following the resignation of National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.
"We know people who want to get in can't get in," Caputo told CNN's "New Day" co-host Chris Cuomo.
"I think what the White House could do, one of the things they could do, is start bringing in more people who were supportive from the very beginning, and be careful about the people they bring in."
Cohn, who refused to cooperate with Trump's call for stiff tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, resigned Tuesday. According to sources, the resignation was announced shortly after the president met with Cohn in the Oval Office and asked for his support.
Trump also reportedly told associates that he expected Cohn, a free-trade advocate, to resign if he went through with his plans to place a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
Caputo told Cuomo that he is not "that concerned" with the high turnover at the White House. According to analysts, there has been a 43 percent turnover in the 14 months Trump has been in office.
"We have the first businessman elected president of the United States," said Caputo. "He didn't come with a deep bench of political hangers looking for jobs. Up until the campaign, people didn't think he was ever going to win."
Where Cohn is concerned, it would not have been easy to change Trump's mind on the tariffs, said Caputo.
"To say you can change the president's mind on something he fundamentally believed since the 1980s is not a good way to go about things," said Caputo. "The president, on tariffs and trade, has been an America first believer for a long, long time."
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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