Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump had a fiery exchange over her controversial tenure heading up Hewlett-Packard during the Wednesday night GOP debate. Fiorina was fired from that job, but not before laying off tens of thousands of her employees.
“I led Hewlett-Packard at a difficult time. … Despite those difficult times, we doubled the size of the company,” Fiorina, who ranks fifth in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, said. “We went from lagging behind, to leading.
“As for the firing, I’ve been honest about this since the day it happened. When you challenge the status quo, you make enemies. I made a few,” Fiorina said. “Steve Jobs told me that, when he called me to say ‘Hey, been there, done that.'”
Trump disagreed with Florina’s relatively upbeat assessment. “The company is a disaster, and continues to be a disaster. In fact today, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, they fired another 20,000 or 30,000 people. They still haven’t recovered from the catastrophe” of Fiorina’s leadership, he said.
He specifically cited HP’s acquisition of Compaq during Fiorina’s tenure. “She bought Compaq, it was a terrible deal. And it led to the destruction of the company.”
“She can’t run any of my companies, that I can tell you,” he said.
Fiorina responded: “Honestly, Mr. Trump, I find it quite rich that you would talk about this… You ran up mountains of debt using other people’s money, and you were forced to file for bankruptcy not once, not twice, four times. Four times. A record four times. Why should we trust you?”
“Many of the great businesspeople who you hear about all the time use the laws of bankruptcy,” Trump replied.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie seemed highly irritated with the exchange. “Well I’m as entertained as anyone about this personal back-and-forth about the history of Donald and Carly’s careers. For the 55-year-old construction worker. … I got to tell you the truth, they could care less about your careers,” Christie said.
