No one has cheered the nativist policies of the Trump administration more than Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. And according to a new book, he effectively pushed out former DHS secretary for failing to follow his directions.
The Trump administration’s second secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, resigned from her post on April 7, 2019. Nielsen served as the face of the Trump administration’s cruelest policy initiative -- the separation of migrant families crossing the southern border. Her tenure was additionally marked by a feud with Trump’s trusted informal adviser, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs.
For weeks in the spring of 2019, Dobbs continually attacked Nielsen for her alleged failure to impose Trump administration’s immigration policy. In a new book on roughly the first two-and-a-half years of the Trump administration, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America, Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig shed more light on Dobbs’ role in Nielsen’s downfall.
Rucker and Leonnig’s reporting exposes new stories that were not previously reported. One particular episode shows the influence Dobbs had on Trump’s views of Nielsen and immigration policy.
According to the authors, Trump “regularly called Nielsen after watching" Dobbs’ show to complain about her performance: