John Schnatter, the founder and former CEO of Papa John’s, spoke to Breitbart News Saturday about how President Donald Trump is the “perfect guy” that Americans need to “drain the swamp.”
When asked by host Matthew Boyle about his views on how Trump was doing so far and how Trump was “leading the presidency like a CEO,” Schnatter explained that Trump has “institutional knowledge” about how Washington, D.C. works, and how it doesn’t. Schnatter added that while some elected officials “don’t understand they serve at the pleasure of the public,” Trump “has the mindset that anything that’s government is suspect and inefficient.”
“What he learned from 2016 to 2020 — the institutional knowledge that he has, is unique. That experience of learning how D.C. works, and of course how it doesn’t work. But, he knows what levers to hit, when to hit them, and how hard to hit them. He’s a unique guy the way he’s hardwired,” Schnatter explained.
“He’s just the perfect guy to do what we need — which is drain the swamp. This is a turnaround situation, if you were CEO. In this country, in this — the bureaucratic nonsense is, it’s ingrained and it’s embedded in government in D.C. And we now have the tail wagging the dog, where people in government, they think we work for them. They don’t understand, they serve at the pleasure of the public. And Trump — everything starts at the top, and it’s all a mindset. Trump has the mindset that anything that’s government is suspect and probably inefficient, and he’s cutting that out.”
When Boyle brought up a recent New York Times article that claimed Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had butted heads during a cabinet meeting, and how Trump stepped in and made a decision to support Rubio, Schnatter explained that he hopes that cabinet members are “challenging each other.”
Schnatter explained that if people aren’t challenging each other, “you’re not going to come up with the best answers.”
“If you look at the continental Congress and the framers, 34 out of 38 were businessmen. Merchants, shippers, small business owners, farmers, they understood commonsense. They understood arithmetic is not an opinion. They understood human nature of both good and bad. But, in this case, you have to look at the source. The New York Times is fake news, they’re fraudulent. This is real simple — it’s called collaborative confrontation. Walt Disney called it positive discontent, dynamic discontent. At the end of the line — when you have a strong cabinet, if you don’t have, if you’re not challenging my judgement and I’m not challenging your judgement, you’re not going to come up with the best answers,” Schnatter added.
“I hope, as strong minded as those cabinet members are, I hope they’re challenging each other. I hope they’re not getting along. But, at the end of the day, under Trump’s leadership, they’re going to agree to disagree, they’re going to challenge each other, they’re going to make each other better, they’re going to come out with the best solution. And Trump’s going to say, ‘Okay, that’s the drum we’re marching to’ and trust it. They’re going to march to that drum.”
