Cliff Sims

myself in it, I think.

Why did you leave?

So I left the White House initially because I had helped

been a part of orchestrating other people getting pushed out of there who were my rivals, and the day came when one of my rivals helped orchestrate getting me pushed out of there.

So when John Kelly became the chief of staff at the White House, we butted heads pretty strongly.

He tried to get me to leave previously.

He tried to make me the assistant secretary of an agency, and I declined, because I said I didn't come to DC to work for the government.

I came to work for the president.

And then I helped run the confirmation for Mike Pompeo to be Secretary of State.

And through that process, Pompeo asked me if I would come be his senior advisor at the State Department.

And so I thought, you know what?

Here's a good kind of off-ramp.

I'll go have a new experience at State, being Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State.

And so I resigned from the White House to go and take that job.

And then John Kelly, as White House Chief of Staff, blocked me being able to go ultimately to the State Department.

And that's how I ended up out of government before coming back later.

Best thing that could have happened for several reasons.

One, it's like going cold turkey if you're a drug addict and like you just got, one day I was walking into the West Wing and the next day I wasn't and there wasn't no going back to it.

It like broke that.

So that was really helpful, healthy.