Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday of reports that President Donald Trump berated Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen so badly that she considered resigning: "That's not the way I would deal with people."
"That's not the way I think I ever did deal with people, and I did fire people — very senior people," Gates, 74, who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told host Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on CBS News.
"But every president is going to have his own style, the way he deals with people," he said. "And, as I say, it's not the way I’d do it — but that's the way he does it."
The New York Times reported Thursday that Nielsen was so troubled after Trump badgered her in a Cabinet meeting about not adequately securing the nation's borders that she wrote a resignation letter that she did not submit.
But Nielsen said later in a statement: "The president is rightly frustrated that existing loopholes have prevented this administration from securing the border and protecting the American people.
"I share his frustration."
Of the high turnover in the Trump administration — 20 resignations and 12 promotions since January 2017 — Gates called it "probably unprecedented."
"For a president who had no experience in government, bringing with him a variety of people who had little or no experience in government, the churn has not been a surprise to me.
"The sooner things settle down and there's a modicum of an organizational process that goes on in terms of policymaking, I think that's better for the country," Gates told Brennan.
"The president will always be influenced significantly by his instincts, and in a number of cases those instincts have served him pretty well.
"He needs to have a group of people around him in whom he has confidence, and with whom he feels comfortable.
"That's been true of every president," Gates explained. "It has taken him longer to get there than his predecessors.
"I think it's because he came to the job with a very different background and a very different personality."
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.