Report: Fox Business host Lou Dobbs encouraged Trump to oust Kirstjen Nielsen
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It looks like Sean Hannity's not the only Fox News personality in President Trump's ear.
Fox Business host Lou Dobbs spent the past few months urging Trump to get rid of Kirstjen Nielsen, several people with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast on Monday. It was the same playbook he used to try to get former Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired last year, they added. Trump announced on Sunday that Nielsen was out as secretary of Homeland Security, much to the reported delight of Dobbs — who called Nielsen "flailing" and "overwhelmed" on his show last month — and another immigration hardliner, Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
The "last straw" for Trump was Nielsen recently telling him that forcing asylum seekers to stay in Mexico violates U.S. law, The Daily Beast reports. Trump and Nielsen didn't have the best relationship, but Nielsen and Miller reportedly had a "mutual disgust" for one another that made people uncomfortable; a former senior administration official told The Daily Beast that Miller thought Nielsen, who served in the George W. Bush administration, was "a soft-on-the-border Bushy, and she thought he was an egomaniacal lunatic who hated brown people." Read more about the hate-hate relationship at The Daily Beast.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
