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Gordon Sondland was an ambassador to the EU who fired Trump in 2020.
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Sondland compared working for Trump to staying at an “all-inclusive resort” that quickly went bad.
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He also said that “the people who work here can be rude and not that smart.”
Gordon Sondland, a one-time ambassador to the European Union, said working for former President Donald Trump was great at first, but went bad very quickly.
“Over time, however, I realized that working with Trump was like staying at an all-inclusive resort. You’re excited when you first arrive, but things start to go downhill fast,” Sondland wrote in his forthcoming book, “The Envoy,” in which he talks about what it was like working for Trump. Insider obtained an advance on the book, which will be released October 25.
“Quality issues start to manifest. The people who work there can be rude and not that smart. Exhaustion is a huge problem. And eventually you start to wonder why you agreed to the deal in the first place,” he continued.
Before becoming the US ambassador to the EU, Sondland made millions running a Portland-based chain of boutique hotels.
Trump’s and Sondland’s shared hospitality history had not escaped the notice of the president: In the book’s prologue, Sondland jokingly described Sondland as a “hotel guy” like him, just not as successful. Sondland assumed the joke was meant to show everyone in the room who was really in charge during the meeting.
“I didn’t mind this kind of thing because in a job like mine you had to take the good with the bad, and that meant putting up with Trump’s uncertainty,” Sondland wrote.
Sondland was one of the key witnesses at Trump’s first impeachment trial. dDuring his stellar testimony in November 2019, he admitted that Trump’s team pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden — the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. Sondland said there was a backlash with Ukraine, with the Trump administration offering military aid in exchange for the Biden investigation.
This undermined Trump’s claim that there was no quid pro quo. Trump was impeached in December 2019. He was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.
Sondland was fired from the Trump administration in February 2020, a few months after his testimony.
Despite his acrimonious departure from Trump’s team, Sondland told The New York Times in an interview published this week that he still supports Trump’s “great” policies. However, he told The Times that he doesn’t think Trump is “the person to move this policy forward now.”
A representative at Trump’s post-presidential news agency did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
