I've had a long history of relationships at the White House, as well as in the Senate and the House. Having been a United States governor, I served with many of them, and many of them are my Republican and Democrat friends.
When Trump got elected, everyone was mortified that he was going to zero-out international aid. I told my friends, because a lot of them were working at the White House, that I knew I could sit down and give the President the reality of what this meant. I knew at the time he had Mattis. So many other leaders—at that time there wasn't Pompeo; he was later—were all very supportive of the World Food Programme. Mattis had said, “If you want to buy more bullets, then cut the World Food Programme”, that it was time to cut international aid.
If you go back to the election year, there was a real, strong movement of the Tea Party and conservatives, so I immediately went to them, sat down and said, “Let me show you what we're doing.” I had to get talked into taking this job myself. That was not an easy decision because my first impression was that I wasn't going to work for the United Nations. I thought it to be inefficient, ineffective, incompetent—