Struggling to find a sane Republican willing to take John Kelly’s job, Donald Trump on Friday awarded the thankless task of White House chief of staff to budget director Mick Mulvaney. “Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration, [and] I look forward to working with him in this new capacity,” the president shouted on Twitter, calling Kelly, with whom he frequently butted heads, a “great patriot.”
Mulvaney, who proved his competence by holding down not one, but two Trump administration jobs, appeared to be a last resort. Trump had already been turned down by Nick Ayers, the ambitious Pence staffer who decided he’d have better luck back in Georgia, and Chris Christie, among others. (Christie, who is effectively retired, claimed it was “not the right time for me or my family to undertake this serious assignment.”) Indeed, the appointment appeared to come as a surprise, even to Mulvaney. The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey tweeted that he’d spoken to a Mulvaney aide less than an hour before Trump’s announcement, who had no idea his boss was about to get the job. (“I really don’t think the aide knew,” he added.)
The timing is curious for another reason, too: Ayers is ostensibly leaving the White House because Trump declined his request to serve on an interim basis. Mulvaney, however, will have the word “Acting” before his official title, suggesting his gig will be time-limited. Perhaps, as political commentators speculated, Trump is simply testing Mulvaney to see if they gel. If Trump doesn’t tire of Mulvaney the way he grew to resent Kelly, and Reince Priebus before him, it could become a full-time job. Mulvaney, after all, has had something of a charmed life in Trump’s White House. With his third administration appointment, Mulvaney cements his legacy as the staffer Trump always turns to when he can’t find anyone else.
In order to take the job, Mulvaney announced that he would step down as director of the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the administration’s budgets and policies, and which he had been running since the beginning of the administration. What will become of his role as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he took on in 2017 after Trump pushed out former C.F.P.B. director Richard Cordray, is less clear. (Given that Mulvaney’s tenure at the the watchdog agency has consisted of attempting to topple it from within, however, he might remain its acting director without much fuss.)
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