Mick Mulvaney crosses Dear Leader:
The former chief of staff to ex-President Donald Trump on Saturday pushed back against his former boss’ recent attempt to whitewash the history of the January 6 Capitol riot.Mick Mulvaney, who stepped down as Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland after the insurrection, called Trump’s comments that his supporters were “hugging and kissing” police officers and posed “zero threat,” despite widespread violence, “manifestly false.”
“I was surprised to hear the President say that. Clearly there were people who were behaving themselves, and then there were people who absolutely were not, but to come out and say that everyone was fine and there was no risk, that’s just manifestly false — people died, other people were severely injured,” Mulvaney told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “Newsroom.””It’s not right to say there was no risk, I don’t know how you can say that when people were killed,” he added.
Mulvaney was one of a handful of senior officials who resigned in the wake of the January 6 riot, including former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and former Trump deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger.Trump earlier this week attempted to rewrite the history of the insurrection, which he stoked by repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him. There is no evidence of widespread fraud, but Trump and many of his conservative allies in the media and on Capitol Hill have continued to push the narrative.
.Calling into Fox News on Thursday night, Trump was asked if he was concerned about the US Capitol’s beefed-up security, including razor-wire fencing, which he derided as “disgraceful” and a “political maneuver.””It was zero threat, right from the start, it was zero threat. Look, they went in, they shouldn’t have done it. Some of them went in, and they are hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know, they had great relationships,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out.”
I’m sure Trump will not be pleased to hear that although I’m sure Mulvaney was already on his enemies list for resigning because of the insurrection anyway. These comments aren’t going to help.
Nonetheless, Mulvaney said he’d vote for Trump again. Of course. But I doubt he was emphatically sycophantic enough:
“He’s still a major player in the Republican Party — there’s a lot of folks who were turned off by the last six weeks, and especially the riots, that he’s going to have to do some work to sort of build bridges back with, if he wants to run again.”
Really? Sadly, I see little evidence of that. The people who were “turned off” dont seem to be Republicans.