Trump’s former Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, quit his more recent gig as special envoy to Northern Ireland, as a result of the armed insurrection at the Capitol this week and and strongly hinted on Fox News that Trump should be pushed out of office one way or another.
Mulvaney seemed genuinely horrified by Trump’s behavior this week. I give him credit for publicly speaking out against Trump on the Sunday shows today. But he was hardly a profile in courage.
Rather than provide any reflection about how he could have overlooked the horrible Trump qualities on display this week – the sedition, the authoritarianism, the undermining of democracy, the ruthlessness, etc. – Mulvaney laughably claimed Trump had somehow changed from the presidential good guy to a villain. I will go into that more in a separate post because I think those comments deserve special emphasis. But again, I give Mulvaney credit for speaking out against Trump now.
MULVANEY: Wednesday is one of those things that struck to the very heart of what it means to be an American.
And it was wrong. And I think it was important for those of us who used to be on the inner circle – I mean, look, you and I have been doing this for years. I came in in 2010, the Tea Party. I started the Freedom Caucus with Mark Meadows. I was in the cabinet. I was the chief of staff. I thought it was important for somebody who is not establishment, who is not a Trump – a Never Trumper to come out and say that that was wrong. It needs to be said again and again and again by as many people as possible.
Mulvaney called the 25th Amendment a “slow” and “very clumsy tool” that has never been used to remove a president. But, he added, “this was such an extreme event on Wednesday, it’s not surprising we’re looking at extreme possible reactions.”
He sounded more interested in impeachment.
MULVANEY: Regarding impeachment, I think it depends. I know the Democrats are going to introduce articles of impeachment on Monday. If it’s just related to Wednesday, that’s one thing. If it’s the type of impeachment that just becomes a list of complaints of why they don’t like Donald Trump, that’s something else. But I think it’s different now than the impeachment was last year. … I think it will be looked at very differently by members of both the House and the Senate.
When asked if he'd vote to impeach for incitement to violence, if he were still a Congressman, Mulvaney would not commit but he made it clear he might. “I would take it really, really seriously,” he said. “I can assure you, there will be members of both parties who would look at it very, very differently than they did last year in the previous impeachment.”
You can watch it below, from the January 10, 2021 Fox News Sunday.