Dem senator: Trump acting like he’s still on ‘The Apprentice’

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Thursday that President Trump appears at times to hearken back to his days hosting “The Apprentice.”

“Some days I think that it seems like he thinks he’s still doing ‘The Apprentice,’ ” Klobuchar said on CNN. “Every day, fire someone else — say they’re going to fire someone else.”

Klobuchar pointed to Trump’s failure a day earlier to rule out firing special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the federal probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

The Democratic senator noted that Trump has already fired numerous officials since taking office, including former FBI Director James Comey, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara.

{mosads}”This is serious stuff, and I was glad the White House dialed it back today, because you don’t just start talking about firing the attorney general of the United States, who has a constitutional duty, and the special counsel.” 

In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Trump expressed frustration with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision in March to recuse himself from the probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Sessions noted his role as a campaign adviser and surrogate in his decision to recuse himself.

Had he known that Sessions would step back from the probe, Trump said, he would have chosen someone else to lead the Justice Department. 

Trump in the interview also took aim at Mueller, whom Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed in May to lead the Justice Department’s Russia probe in the wake of Comey’s firing.

The president accused Mueller of hiring investigators with conflicts of interest, and declined to say whether or not he would fire the special counsel if Mueller stepped outside the boundaries of his investigation.

Trump’s comments about Mueller and Sessions stirred speculation that the president could be weighing letting them go. 

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Thursday that the president “doesn’t intend” to fire Mueller. She also asserted that Trump remains confident in Sessions’s ability to do his job.