Administration

Podesta: Trump ‘unfit’ for office

by Rebecca Savransky 05/22/17 12:29 PM ET

John Podesta says President Trump is “unfit” to serve as president.

In an interview with Politico, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman called Trump “absolutely crazy,” pointing to his firing of FBI Director James Comey.

“It’s laughable, really laughable that Donald Trump would fire Jim Comey because of his interference which damaged Hillary Clinton. I mean, it was laughable from the very beginning,” Podesta said during the interview.

“Just a complete misreading of reality.”

{mosads}They White House initially said Comey was fired after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote a recommendation that cited Comey’s poor handling of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State.

But Trump himself told NBC News last week that he would have fired Comey regardless of the recommendations, saying he did it because “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”

Podesta said he doesn’t think Comey should have been fired “given the circumstances that he was leading this investigation.”

He noted that the events that have occurred over the last couple of weeks show that Trump is “incapable of doing the job.”

Podesta said he believes it is “close to an obstruction case, either in the political context of impeachment, or in the context of a criminal grand jury investigation to indict somebody for obstruction.”

Podesta further said the problem in the Trump White House is that “they have no one who really stands up to” the president.

“He’s impetuous, he’s impulsive, he fires things off and, if anything, they enable him rather than trying to contain what are moves that in any other context would seem, you know, absolutely crazy,” Podesta said.

“If they’re going to try to right this place and be able to be effective, I think they need a much stronger team who can resist his impulses and tell him that he’s wrong.”