"Shark Tank" star Kevin O’Leary predicted that Donald Trump would approach his second term as president with great seriousness because he understood his legacy was on the line, but CNN's Erin Burnett was dubious.
The Trump-backing economist and Fox News contributor appeared Wednesday to tout the president-elect's policy plans for his next administration and praised Elon Musk, who is expected to play a major role in the ex-president's next term.
"Actually, I used to work for Steve Jobs – he was not a nice guy to work for," O'Leary said. "By the way he was 85 percent signal, 15 percent noise. The only other entrepreneur that I have ever seen that is more efficient than Jobs is Elon Musk. He is 100 percent signal – difficult social skills as a result, it does not matter."
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Burnett laughed and said O'Leary had phrased that diplomatically, and the economist continued lavishing praise on the tech mogul, who has vowed to cut at least $2 trillion in government spending as an unelected bureaucrat.
"Every mandate he's decided to take on he is executed on, no man on earth has executional skills like that," O'Leary said. "If he says he will do that, he will surround himself with advocates and he will put them to work. If you look at his business models, he brings good quality then he comes in and runs the show. He will need Trump to back him on this. No agency wants to be downsized. If they do this, they can find a lot of savings."
Trump is on track to become the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and Burnett asked whether that apparent mandate would attract higher quality candidates to serve in his next administration.
"I have good news for you," O'Leary said. "Howard Lutnick is running the transition team. I spoke with him very briefly – A-listers coming in, we will not have the same volatility that we had on mandate one. Trump 2.0 wants this to work, it will not be a rotating door of guys coming in and writing books about their horrible experience. They are going to find great people to run this mandate. This is his legacy mandate, he will be good for three years before he is a lame duck, and he knows that."
Burnett appeared to be skeptical and asked whether he honestly believed Trump was concerned about his historical legacy.
"You think he does know that?" she said. "You think he cares?"
O'Leary said the former president had a new appreciation for life and his legacy after two apparent assassination attempts.
"Being shot at twice sobers you up a bit," he said. "He is changed, he is far more pragmatic. I am an advocate to let him do his thing and watch them go to work he cares a lot about the economy and he made promises he wants to keep. You get to that point in life, we want to leave something behind that was a great thing. I think this is what we he will be focused on."
"I want to say something about the outcome," O'Leary added. "We corrected ourselves last night, America corrected itself. We were going to a crazy place, but that's what I love about democracy – it fixed itself. We are all better off, even the Democrats. This was good for them, they get to reboot, this party will be stronger in 36 months."
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