Even President Trump’s air force secretary can’t escape questions about the president’s public feud with Sen. Bob Corker.
Secretary Heather Wilson was at a Forbes conference about powerful women Tuesday when she was asked what she thought about Corker’s claims that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Trump’s chief of staff Gen. John Kelly are saving the country from chaos.
“Everyone has their own perspective,” she said. “I think my personal view is that America is a pretty rock solid place and we are a resilient place and sometimes Washington seems to get pretty full of itself.”
Wilson, a former Republican congresswoman for New Mexico, was confirmed by the Senate in May and was among Trump’s first major Defense Department appointees. She works under Mattis.
On Tuesday, Trump mocked Corker, the Foreign Relations chairman, as being short, calling him “Liddle Bob,” and claimed the Tennessee Republican had been tricked into giving an explosively critical New York Times interview over the weekend.
For his part, Corker had compared the White House to an “adult day care center” and had criticized Trump as reckless with foreign policy without intervention by Mattis, Tillerson, and Kelly.
Wilson told Judy Woodruff of PBS News Hour Mattis is one of the best leaders she has ever worked for and appeared ready to dodge further comment on the charged issue of Corker and Trump but continued on after a pause.
“Really, most Americans are going on with their daily lives and they don’t really much care about the rhetoric that swirls around this city,” Wilson said.
She said the Defense Department is largely not focused on or affected by the political controversy, which swept up most of Washington on Tuesday with Trump’s new barbed tweets.
“The members of the United States military focus on a mission that we have to do to make sure that we are ready and trained and a lot of the stuff that swirls around doesn’t penetrate,” Wilson said.
