Conservative pundit George Will on Sunday trashed Donald Trump as a “sore winner” for barring former cabinet members Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo from his next administration.
NewsNation analyst said it appears that only devout MAGA party-liners will make it into the White House this time around after Trump announced Saturday that he will not consider the two senior figures, who criticized him in the past, to join his cabinet.
“Well, it’s easy to say that what we’ve learned is that he who was a sore loser in 2020 is a sore winner in 2024,” Will said, inferring that Trump was “settling scores with his own team.”
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He added: “A lot of people said, well, it’ll be okay because people like Pompeo, Nikki Haley will be adult supervision in the administration. Not going to be there.”
Will then suggested that Trump‘s “mentality” showed in his pre-firing of Haley and Pompeo, with Donald Trump Jr. recently openly admitting that he was pushing for yes-men in his dad’s cabinet.
“So, the absence of those two people matters. And what matters even more is perhaps the mentality we can infer on the part of the President from there. Being defenestrated before they even got in,” he said.
“Yeah, the Haley one makes a certain amount of sense, right? She criticized him, they did battle. He is, as you say–can be a sore winner," host Chris Stirewalt said.
“But the Pompeo one was a little striking because he had been popular with Trump in the first administration. And I guess criticisms of him for being too pro-Ukraine,” the host added.
Will countered by suggesting that Trump could consider taking the high road if he wanted a strong administration.
“But remember, Kennedy in 1960 had hard things said about him and his father by Lyndon Johnson. Kind of he said, don‘t care, want to win, let’s turn the page,” Will said.
