James Baker says if he worked in Donald Trump’s administration, the President’s penchant for tweeting would have made his job “a lot harder.”
The former secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush and White House chief of staff to Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush sat down with David Axelrod on a special edition of “The Axe Files,” airing on Saturday at 7pm ET on CNN.
“A lot of people will tell you they think it’s counterproductive,” Baker said of Trump’s Twitter habit. “Running a business and running the government are two entirely different undertakings.”
“The one thing that I would worry about, if I were one of his senior officials, would be not knowing until 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning when you see the most recent tweet what the policy was,” he continued. “Because when a president of the United States speaks he speaks … he’s creating policy.”
“But it worked for him. In the campaign, it worked for him in business. Who’s to say it won’t work? But I will tell you this. If I were secretary of state, it would make my job a lot harder,” Baker told Axelrod.
Trump has focused a great deal of recent Twitter attention on NFL players protesting by refusing to stand for the National Anthem, following his inflammatory comments about the subject at an Alabama rally.
While he did not share his thoughts on the President’s denunciations, Baker said he thinks the protests are “outrageous.”
“There are plenty of ways that you can, that you can call into question some of the racism that may still exist in this country, but that’s the wrong way to do it,” Baker said, adding that being American used to be “the one thing” that unified people.
“You can’t tell me that not standing up for the National Anthem with your hand over your heart is not denigrating to the National Anthem or the flag, it is,” Baker told Axelrod.