Trump and Palin are pictured here in 2011. Donald Trump says he'd tap Sarah Palin for a Cabinet post

Donald Trump has succeeded in alienating many of his fellow Republicans with his personal attacks, but if he does win in November 2016 and is forced to assemble a cabinet of GOP allies, he knows exactly whom he would call on: Sarah Palin.

When asked on Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizz Radio’s “The Palin Update” Monday whether he would seek the former Alaska governor’s advice as president or potentially appoint her to an executive-branch position, Trump said, “I’d love that.”


“She’s really somebody who knows what’s happening. She’s a special person. She’s really a special person. And I think people know that and she’s got a following that’s unbelievable,” he continued. (Palin has more than 4 million Facebook followers.)

“I’m looking at some of these candidates, they’re weak, they’re ineffective and to a degree that’s almost hard to believe. And, you know, they like the Sarah Palin kind of strength. You just don’t see very much of it anymore,” Trump mused.

He noted that Palin has come up in his interactions on the campaign trail. “I’ve still got people saying, ‘Oh, get Sarah’s support, get Sarah’s support.’ No matter where I go, everybody loves her.”

Though they come from opposite ends of the country, Palin and Trump have previously bonded over their outsider status in the Republican Party.

In 2011, Palin’s bus tour stopped in New York City and the two were spotted eating pizza at Albanian chain pizza restaurant La Famiglia, a decision mocked by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” as well as by New York-style pizza enthusiasts on social media. Stewart accused Trump of being a bad host because he stacked his slices of pizza and ate them with a fork, anathema to most New York pizza-lovers’ sensibilities.

Trump noted in the “Palin Update” interview that both he and Palin have grown used to constant media criticism.

“Now she has, like me, some people that don’t exactly love us and we understand who they are and you sort of forget about that,” he said.

“She took so much nonsense, lies and disgusting lies, and she handles it so well. She’s tough and smart.”

Also in 2011, Palin praised Trump’s demand that President Barack Obama to release his birth certificate. “Media: Admit it. Trump forced the issue,” she tweeted after the president did so.

More recently, she told CNN that Trump was a “hero” for “giving voice to untold millions of fed-up Americans witnessing a purposeful destruction of our economy and the equal opportunity for success that made America exceptional.”

In that interview, Palin declined to criticize’s Trump’s attack on her 2008 running mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, characterizing the controversy as a “media-driven wedge between them.”