Chris Whipple

She clearly regards Russell Vogt as a real MAGA hardliner, a zealot, as she put it.

But I'm not sure she holds it against him.

I mean, I think that she thinks that this is an extraordinarily competent cabinet.

A lot of people would say the opposite.

But she believes in what she calls disruptors.

She thinks Pete Hegseth is one and that the Defense Department needed that.

She refers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

as my Bobby, quirky Bobby, but just what the doctor ordered for HHS, a kind of shock treatment.

So, look, she's all in with this very hardline cabinet.

I think what she believed in, above all, Terry, was she wanted Trump to be able to have the people he wanted, the team that he wanted.

And I think she would also subscribe to the view among a lot of the Trump White House, the current Trump White House, that the problem during Trump 1.0, his first term,

was that you had all of these independent-minded people like General Mattis and John Kelly and others who were telling Trump what he couldn't do, trying to put him in a kind of straitjacket.

And I think she was determined to help Trump pick the people who would execute his agenda in his view and in her view.

But I don't think it's...

I think it was tactical in that sense.

Well, she would fiercely contest that.

She would argue with you about whether she's an enabler, quote unquote.

And I'll tell you, I interviewed Leon Panetta, whom I've known for a long time.

He was Bill Clinton's extremely effective and empowered White House chief of staff.

He really turned the Clinton White House around, in my view, very much up there with Jim Baker as the gold standard.