Former Trump aide Peter Navarro disparaged the ex-president’s top staffers and officials — from his “Motley Crue of Chiefs” to his “Cabinet of Clowns” — in his new book, The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday.
Navarro remained loyal to Trump, even as he laid into the former president’s choices for chief of staff in his upcoming book, titled “Taking Back Trump’s America.”
In an excerpt obtained by The Daily Beast, Navarro described Mark Meadows, Mick Mulvaney and John Kelly, who all served as chief of staff to Trump, as being in a “dead heat” for the title of worst chief of staff in history.
However, Navarro added that Meadows, who was named the worst chief of staff in history by historian Chris Whipple, earned that “distinction.”
Navarro also criticized Kelly for being “brutally and simply incapable of messaging anything to the press.”
“From a media perspective, this was like recruiting a trucker to drive a Formula One car,” Navarro wrote. “Or maybe like using a chainsaw for open heart surgery.”
Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, received the tamest review from Navarro.
While Navarro described him as “the wrong, small, and inexperienced man for a very big job,” he also said Priebus could “have turned out to be the best of the bunch if the Boss had only given you a bit more time to prove yourself.”
Navarro was indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in June for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Navarro’s attempt to compel documents from the Justice Department over claims that his prosecution was politically motivated.