WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich said the first thing Donald Trump needs to do to be successful as president would be to work with Congress to pass a law allowing him to fire “incompetent bureaucrats.”

“The first thing they have to do to be successful is pass a law allowing them to fire incompetent bureaucrats. Just take a look at the Veterans Administration,” Gingrich told The Daily Caller in an interview Tuesday. “You cannot manage the Veterans Administration until you can manage the people who are there.”

[dcquiz] The former speaker of the House, whose name is being floated as a potential vice presidential nominee for Trump, pointed to a case in Puerto Rico where the union, he said, had a self-confessed armed robber re-instated to his job.

According to Gingrich, the worker got his job back on the grounds that the union’s two immediate bosses were a convicted sex offender and a person with a record of drugs.

“So instead of saying all three should be gone, the union’s position was, ‘They’re both criminals. He should be re-hired too.’ And this stuff goes on all the time and Trump will never be able to manage the federal government,” said Gingrich. “There are thousands places like that filled with arrogant bureaucrats seeking to impose their values on the country.”

The former Georgia Republican congressman warned that such legislation would produce an angry backlash. Trump’s Campaign Manager Drops Hint About VP

“In my mind that means, you better look at Madison, Wisconsin and expect that any genuine reform administration is going to have the kind of attacks that Scott Walker got, because they’re not going to go quietly into the night.”

Does Gingrich see himself as Trump’s VP? Gingrich replied, “It’s all up to Donald Trump. It’s the first really big decision he’ll make, and I’m sure he’ll be thinking about it very carefully and looking at a number of options. … There are a bunch of good names out there.”

Gingrich says he has not “even thought about” the idea of being in Trump’s cabinet or any other administration post.

He explicitly ruled out being White House chief of staff. Gingrich said, “That’s real work. I don’t want to do real work. Chief of staff is really a hard job.”

“I’m interested in helping the administration succeed. I didn’t work in the Bush administration. I took a series of advisory posts like the Defense Policy Board, and I was actively involved in a whole bunch of different departments. So I’d have to wait and see,” he said.

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