Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who endorsed him Tuesday night, could play a role in his administration if she wanted one.
In September, Western Journalism reported that Palin mentioned in an interview that she would like to serve as Secretary of Energy in order to put that department out of business.
“I haven’t discussed anything with her about what she’d do, but she’s somebody I really like and I respect, and certainly she could play a position if she wanted to,” Trump said Wednesday on Today.
Despite Palin’s September comments, Trump said Palin endorsed him without asking for anything for herself.
“She never said, ‘Gee, I’d like to do this, I’d like to do that.’ She never made a deal, like so many people want to try to make deals,” he said. “She just said, ‘I really like what’s going on. It’s an amazing thing. I’ve never seen anything like it in politics.’”
Trump said it was unlikely that Palin, who ran for vice president in 2008 with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would be his running mate should he win the GOP nomination.
“Well, I don’t think that’s something she’d want to do, she’s been through that,” Trump said.
In September, after Palin made some of her initial comments supporting Trump, she was asked on a CNN talk show if she wanted a Cabinet post in a potential Trump administration.
“I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby … And if I were head of that, I would get rid of it,” she said. “And I would let the states start having more control over the lands that are within their boundaries and the people who are affected by the developments within their space.”
Palin said that, before putting herself out of a job, she would change the way Washington views energy issues.
“It would be a short-term job but … it would be really great to have someone who knows energy, and is pro-responsible development to be in charge,” Palin said.
Palin stressed that, as the former governor of resource-rich Alaska, she has extensive knowledge of “oil and gas and minerals, those things that God has dumped on this part of the Earth for mankind’s use, instead of relying on unfriendly foreign nations for us to import their resources.”
h/t: Washington Examiner
Photo credit: “Sarah Palin by Gage Skidmore 4” by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.
BCN editor’s note: This article first appeared at Western Journalism.