2016: Mulvaney, just days before Trump was elected:
“I’m supporting Donald Trump…he is a “terrible human being.”
cbsnews.com, Dec. 15, 2018
2020: Mulvaney on Trump’s baseless allegations of voter and election fraud:
“Allegations are not enough, and everybody knows this.” Lawyers “have to put up or shut up on the evidence for the lawsuits. You can’t go out on TV and say, ‘They’re stealing the election,’ and not back that up with facts.”
finance.yahoo.com, Nov. 10, 2020
2020: Mick Mulvaney Spectacularly Self-Owns With His ‘One Criticism’ Of Donald Trump
Former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was mocked on social media Friday after he revealed the “one criticism” he could have of President Donald Trump.
“If there was one criticism that I would level against the president, is that he didn’t hire very well,” Mulvaney, who is now the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland, told CNN’s “New Day” while defending Trump from the slew of criticism he has faced from former top-ranking officials in his administration.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mick-mulvaney-criticism-donald-trump_n_5eeddf8dc5b6a88304d0f54e
2021: Mulvaney resigns after Trump instigates Capitol riots with false claims of election fraud:
President Donald Trump’s former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney resigned his post as special envoy to Northern Ireland on Thursday, saying “I can’t do it. I can’t stay.”
He joined a growing list of Trump administration officials who are leaving following the violent riot at the Capitol on Wednesday. The riot occurred after Trump addressed a massive rally in Washington fueled by the president’s repeated allegations that he lost the November election because of election fraud, which is not substantiated.
clicktohouston.com, Jan. 7, 2021
2022: “When, oh Lord, when will the elite political media treat the current Republican Party as the threat to the republic that it most obviously is?” asked Charlie Pierce in Esquire:
CBS News has hired Mick Mulvaney as a paid on-air contributor. In his first official appearance on Tuesday morning to talk about President Joe Biden’s budget proposal, anchor Anne-Marie Green introduced Mulvaney as “a former Office of Management and Budget director,” and said, “So happy to have you here…. You’re the guy to ask about this.”
Mulvaney was a far-right U.S. representative from South Carolina from 2011 to 2017, when he went to work for then-president Trump as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. While in that position, he also took over as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government organization organized by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) after the financial crisis of 2008. In its first five years, the CFPB recovered about $11.7 billion for about 27 million consumers, but in Congress, Mulvaney introduced legislation to abolish it. At its head, Mulvaney zeroed out the bureau’s budget and did his best to dismantle it.
While retaining his role at the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Mulvaney took on the job of acting White House chief of staff on January 2, 2019. This unprecedented dual role put him in a key place to do an end run around official U.S. diplomats in Ukraine and to set up a back channel to put pressure on newly elected Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce he was launching an investigation into the actions of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
As director of OMB, Mulvaney okayed the withholding of almost $400 million Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s protection against Russia. In May 2019, he set up “the three amigos,” Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, special envoy Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to pressure Zelensky. When the story came out, Mulvaney told the press that Trump had indeed withheld the money to pressure Zelensky to help him cheat in the 2020 election. “I have news for everybody,” he said. “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.” He immediately walked the story back, but there it was.
This event was the basis for Trump’s first impeachment. While Republican senators refused to hold Trump accountable, the Government Accountability Office found that withholding the money was illegal. Ironically, the GAO report came out during Trump’s second impeachment.
And yet, CBS News hired Mulvaney and simply introduced him as a former director of the OMB, saying he was the guy to explain Biden’s budget. (After the episode, the CBS News standards department reminded staffers they should always identify people with their relevant biographical information.)
Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post tonight revealed that he had reviewed a recording of a phone call in which the co-president of CBS News, Neeraj Khemlani, suggested they had hired Mulvaney to guarantee access to Republican lawmakers. “If you look at some of the people that we’ve been hiring on a contributor basis, being able to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms,” Khemlani told staff. “A lot of the people that we’re bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation.”
People on the right have talked about a “liberal media” now for a generation. It has come to represent the idea that the media is slanted toward the Democrats. But initially, the phrase meant media based in facts.
In the 1950s, those eager to get rid of the government system instituted by the Democrats during the Great Depression of the 1930s grew frustrated because people liked that system, with its business regulation, basic social safety net, and promotion of infrastructure.
In 1951, in God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom,” William F. Buckley, Jr., rejected the Enlightenment idea that rigorous debate over facts would lead toward truth; the fondness of a majority of Republicans and Democrats for the newly active national government proved people could not be trusted to know what was best for them. Instead, he called for the exclusion of “bad” ideas like an active government, and for universities to push individualism and Christianity.
Three years later, Buckley and his brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell, Jr., would divide the world into “Liberals,” by which they meant the majority of Americans from both parties who liked the New Deal government, and “Conservatives” like themselves, who were determined to overturn that government. Movement Conservatives lumped Soviet-style socialism and the New Deal government together.
With its focus on facts, the media, like the universities, was “liberal,” and Movement Conservatives wanted their ideology to be heard. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan’s appointees to the Federal Communications Commission killed the Fairness Doctrine, which had required public media to present issues fairly, and right-wing talk radio took off. In 1996, Australian-born Rupert Murdoch started the Fox News Channel, calling it “fair and balanced” because it presented the Movement Conservative ideology that fact-based media ignored.
Twenty-five years later, that ideology had become so powerful that true believers tried to stop a legitimately elected Democrat from becoming president, and in the year since, their conviction has only become stronger. Now CBS News has hired a member of the administration that urged the attack on our democracy.
“When, oh Lord, when will the elite political media treat the current Republican Party as the threat to the republic that it most obviously is?” asked Charlie Pierce in Esquire.
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, heathercoxrichardson@
substack.com March 30, 2022
July 2022:
Former Trump chief of staff: Republicans should pay attention to Jan. 6 hearings
BY MICK MULVANEY
Mick Mulvaney was former President Donald Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff in the final days of his term. Mulvaney resigned Jan. 6, 2021 following the attack on the Capitol. He is currently co-chair of Actum, LLC and lives in Indian Land, S.C.
Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article263174168.html#storylink=cpy
UPDATED JULY 05, 2022
The significance of last week’s Congressional Jan. 6 committee hearings cannot be overstated.
For the first time, evidence was presented that former President Trump knew some of the protesters were armed before encouraging them to go the Capitol, that right-wing extremist rioters communicated directly with the White House, that key Presidential advisers requested pardons, that the chief White House lawyer was concerned about getting “charged with every crime imaginable,” and that someone within Trump world may be trying to tamper with committee witnesses. Serious stuff. But roughly half the country — the Republican half — isn’t watching. They object that the hearings are a made-for-TV show trial, designed to attack the former president and salvage the Democrats’ dismal prospects in the upcoming midterms.
They claim that the “Unselect Committee” is made up entirely of Trump-haters and that there is no cross-examination of witnesses. They complain that the committee has heavily edited the evidence, and that the full testimonies of the witnesses have not been released. They point out that some of the evidence presented is hearsay that would never see the light of day in a legitimate court hearing. And they are correct. On every single point.
But they still should be paying attention. That is because, despite all of the flaws in the structure of the heavily Democrat committee, almost all of the evidence presented so far is coming from eminently credible sources: Republicans.
Bill Barr is a two-time Republican U.S. Attorney General. As recently as a few weeks ago he was still defending the former president against charges of criminal activity. When he swears, under oath, that he investigated almost every allegation of voter fraud — including those in the 2000 Mules movie — and found them to be completely worthless, Republicans should pay attention.
Rusty Bowers is the Republican Speaker of the House in Arizona. He campaigned for Trump and voted for him twice. And until last week at least, said he would do so again. When he swears, under oath, that Rudy Giuliani tried to cajole him into intervening in the electoral count in Arizona, and told him “We have lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence…,” Republicans should pay attention.
Cassidy Hutchinson worked for Sen. Ted Cruz and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise before working in the Trump White House. She started (working for me) in the Office of Legislative Affairs before becoming an aide to the Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Get unlimited digital access Subscribe now for just $2 for 2 months. CLAIM OFFER She was a Special Assistant to the President of the United States. When she swears, under oath, that she was told that the president knew some of the Jan. 6 protesters were armed, that Meadows was in direct communication with the Proud Boys, and that Meadows and Giuliani asked President Trump for pardons, Republicans should pay attention.
Yes, it is possible that all of those life-long Republicans succumbed to Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is possible they decided to ignore a life-long political affiliation. It is also possible they chose to perjure themselves about what they saw, heard and know. But if they didn’t, and half of the country isn’t paying attention, then that half of the country is clinging firmly to an opinion of Jan. 6, 2021 that is based on either false or incomplete information.
And clinging firmly to a belief based on false or incomplete information can lead to disastrous results. January 6 itself is a stark reminder of that. When Republicans start testifying under oath that other Republicans lost the 2020 election and then broke the law to try to change that, Republicans should pay attention. Everyone should.
They resigned in protest over Jan. 6 — then never went after Trump again
The administration officials who defected from the administration over the riots have almost all receded from public view even as Trump’s stayed put.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/03/trumpworld-jan-6-526291
In the hours after a mob of angry Donald Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, a number of prominent Trump administration officials and Republicans decided that they’d had enough.
With a mix of anger and outrage, they condemned Trump for either stoking the riots or doing next-to-nothing to stop them. Cabinet officials submitted letters of resignation. Golf buddies and top donors broke their alliances. Top advisers said they’d been let down by Trump.
It was a notable moment of public dissent after four years marked mostly by fidelity. But its impact has proved minimal.
One year after the Jan. 6 riot, the voices of those who broke with Trump over that day have mostly been muted, moved on, or, in certain instances, come to embrace Trump all over again. POLITICO contacted eighteen Trump administration officials who stepped down as a result of Jan. 6 or whose resignation seemed timed to it. Only one agreed to speak on the record about their decision that day.
“I think it’s about survival,” said Stephanie Grisham, who resigned on Jan. 6 as chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump and recently published a book that criticized the president’s and first lady’s handling of the riots. “If you stand up then you’re going to be out there alone.”
Twelve months ago, the outgoing president’s political future appeared to be in serious jeopardy. Not only had he lost his reelection bid, but his post-election conduct — including the peddling of baseless lies about the integrity of Joe Biden’s victory— and his encouragement of a D.C. gathering timed with Congress’ certification of the vote, had created the kindling that led to the riots.
When those rioters stormed the capitol and Trump offered only a milquetoast response, the condemnation was swift.
On the House floor that day, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Trump “bears responsibility” for the “attack on Congress by mob rioters” and advised Congress to censure the president. “Count me out,” said Trump’s closest confidante in the Senate and favorite golf partner, Sen. Lindsey Graham. “Enough is enough.”
Former attorney general William Barr called Trump’s behavior “a betrayal of his office and supporters.” Republicans in Congress encouraged articles of impeachment brought against the president. Twitter and Facebook suspended Trump.
Some TV talking heads speculated that Trump might fade away into a retired life of buffets and golf at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. It appeared, at least for a moment, that Trump could become persona non grata in national politics.
Yet over the course of the past year, Trump’s grip on the party hasn’t diminished. Instead, in critical ways, it remains firm.
Trump holds court in Palm Beach where a steady stream of Republican candidates and operatives travel to gain his approval and, they hope, endorsement. Lawmakers still answer phone calls from the former president and some, like McCarthy and Graham, have flocked to his compound for a meeting and to pose for a photo, too. Trump has held MAGA rallies, does interviews with conservative media, and went on tour with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. His 2021 Christmas picture book sold thousands of copies. It is considered a fait accompli in certain corners that Trump won’t just run again for office but that he will easily become the Republican Party’s nominee.
“You’ve got two camps right now of people who should speak out and haven’t. The first camp knows Trump is a dangerous and vindictive man but doesn’t want to upend their lives by provoking his ire. The second camp is more nakedly transactional,” said Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration who was revealed to be the author of “Anonymous,” an anti-Trump tell-all. “They see that the GOP is still drunk on the MAGA Kool Aid, and they don’t want to get left behind.”
A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
“If the American system of government fails this year, it will not be because the institutions established by the Founders failed. It will not be because of new technologies or flaws in the Constitution. No system of government can protect against a determined tyrant. Only the people can. This year we will learn if they will.”