Trump Claims He Fired José Andrés. The Chef Says He'd Already Quit.
President Donald Trump boasted on social media that world-renowned chef José Andrés was among the appointees he fired on his first day back in office. The only problem with that claim, the chef said Tuesday, is that he’d already quit last week.
Andrés, who served as the co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition under President Joe Biden, responded after Trump announced Monday that his administration was removing “over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again.” He specifically called out the chef and humanitarian, telling him: “YOU’RE FIRED!”
I submitted my resignation last week…my 2 year term was already up,” Andrés responded Tuesday with shrugging and laughing emojis.
Members of the council, he also noted, were all unpaid volunteers who worked on nonpartisan projects, including a “historic partnership between the White House and every major sports league to increase access to sports and health programs for kids.”
“May God give you the wisdom, Mr. President, to put politics and name calling aside,” the Spanish American chef continued, “and instead lift up the everyday people working to bring America together.”
Trump, who’s denounced thousands of federal workers as members of the “deep state” and already made it easier to fire them, announced the firing of a few other people in his post, including his former Iran envoy Brian Hook from the Wilson Center think tank. The president didn’t acknowledge that he, not Biden, had appointed Hook to the post during his first term.
Others he fired in his social media post include Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from an export council.