Former acting secretary of Homeland Security appears in Goldsboro on GOP bus tour

Wolf discusses what it was like working for Trump

GOLDSBORO — Chad Wolf remembers a night from late 2019, when he was acting secretary of Homeland Security under then-president Donald Trump.

When he took the job, advisors warned Wolf about Trump’s energy level and the workload he’d be taking on in the job.

“I’m a little bit younger than he is,” the 48-year-old former college tennis player recalled thinking. “So, when I got there, I was like, ‘I can keep up with it. I’ve heard this before. I got it. I got this.’”

“I was worn out,” he said with a laugh. ”So, there’s one night where it had been a couple hard weeks in a row. I look at my wife, and I was like, ‘I just, I need, like, five or six hours of uninterrupted sleep.’”

He went off to bed at 10:00 that night.

“I’m just gonna get some sleep refresh,” he said. “I was like, ‘Yep, I’m turning my phone off.’ Terrible idea.”

At 1:30 in the morning, his wife nudged him awake.

“Someone’s in the house,” she said.

“I was like, ‘That can’t be. There’s like a team of Secret Service agents that monitor the house. We’re fine,’” Wolf recalled.

His wife insisted, however.

“Finally, I go down the stairs,” he said. “And yeah, I’ve got an agent standing in my front door, just yelling. ‘The President would like to speak with you now.’”

Wolf placed a secure late-night call to Trump, who was still hard at work.

“He just wants to chat about a couple of things,” Wolf said. “He said, ‘Chad, we need to do this.’ Yes, Mr. President. We can do that. I hang up, go back to bed and get up at six. I’m starting to get ready for work. Another call comes in from the White House. ‘The President would like to speak with you.’”

Wolf was connected with Trump, who asked him, “Chad, how we doing? What we talked about—how’s that coming?”

“That was five hours ago,” Wolf recalled. “Most of the people in my department are still asleep.”

The former Trump cabinet member told the story while in Goldsboro last week. Wolf crisscrossed the state in the Trump/Vance campaign bus, joined by North Carolina Republican candidates such as Buck Newton and Dan Bishop, as well as fellow members of Trump’s first administration like Peter Navarro and Matthew Whitaker.

Speaking in front of more than 60 GOP supporters at the Wayne County  Republican party offices in downtown Goldsboro, Wolf discussed what it was like working for the former president.

“I was at the department for all four years, the acting secretary for the last 15 months, and I was in a lot of Oval Office meetings,” he said. A couple of things that I took away from those encounters with President Trump—one is accountability. I don’t know if you remember, the President like to fire people. As someone who worked for him, that keeps you focused. But he ran it like a business, right? And if you weren’t performing and you weren’t producing, it’s time to go. How many people have been fired by President Biden? The economy, withdrawal from Afghanistan, absolute disaster. The border is a wreck. No one has been fired. Probably the worst example is the President gets shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. Do they fire the Secret Service Director? No, they allow her to resign a week later. That is unacceptable.”

It’s an issue that resonates with Wolf, who, as Homeland secretary, was in charge of the Secret Service.

Wolf also recalled Trump’s unorthodox approach toward debate in the Oval Office.

“His leadership style, which is unique, but it’s also refreshing all at the same time,” he said. “I hear a lot of criticism from folks who say, ‘Oh, well, you know, President Trump only surrounds himself by people that agree with him. So it’s like, a yes fest all day.’ That’s not what I saw. I was at many Oval Office meetings where you would have 10-12, people in there. You have his senior advisors. You would even have cabinet secretaries, and they’re arguing with one another about issues, arguing with the President about issues. That’s the way he absorbed information. He learned this way and made decisions, and it got heated at times. It wasn’t the best. It was a little colorful language at times.”

“I think that’s what the American people want,” Wolf continued. “These are all issues that were being debated that affect everyone, whether it was your paycheck, your national security, whatever it might be. … We need someone back in that in that position, back in the office, going in every day, having tough conversations, and making tough decisions instead of deferring to advisors or (saying) we’ll study that.”

And yes, it could also mean the occasional late-night visit from a secret service agent.