Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, said Thursday he doesn’t believe President Trump’s children should be working at the White House and encouraged the president to remove them from their positions in the administration.
“I’m going out on a limb here, but I would say I think it would be in the president’s best interest if he removed all of his children from the White House. Not only Donald Trump [Jr.], but Ivanka and Jared Kushner,” Flores said in an interview with KBTX-TV that aired Thursday. “I wish that he would get them out of the way so that we can have professional staff at the White House handle policy issues.”
Ivanka Trump works in the West Wing as an assistant to the president, and her husband, Kushner, is a senior adviser at the White House.
Flores was asked his thoughts on Trump Jr.’s meeting last year with a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
It was later revealed in an email exchange Trump Jr. released on his Twitter account Tuesday that an intermediary orchestrating the meeting told Trump Jr. the information was part of the Russian government’s efforts to help his father’s campaign.
“I do find issues with the meeting,” Flores said. “It’s a meeting that should not have taken place. I think he thought he was looking out for his father’s best interest.”
Trump defended his oldest son’s decision to meet with Veselnitskaya, and said he only learned about the meeting a few days ago.
“I think many people would have held that meeting,” Trump told Reuters in an interview Wednesday.
Trump Jr. appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night to discuss the meeting, which earned him praise from his father.
“He was open, transparent and innocent,” Trump said on his Twitter account Wednesday. “This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!”
