Trump names a temporary chief of staff
After several candidates decline, Mick Mulvaney, left, now the president’s budget director, will serve as an acting replacement for John F. Kelly.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday named Mick Mulvaney, now his budget director, as his acting chief of staff, only temporarily solving a management and public relations problem that has consumed the White House in the week since the president announced that John F. Kelly would leave the job by the end of the year.
Trump tweeted the news after the close of business, just hours after a spokesperson had told reporters that the president would take his time and that the search could go on for weeks. Trump wrote that Kelly would remain through the end of the year, presumably to help with the transition.
But neither Trump’s tweets nor the limited guidance from White House aides who refused to be identified clarified for reporters how long Mulvaney would stay on or whether he would return to the budget office at what is typically a busy time.
“There’s no time limit,” a senior administration official said of Mulvaney’s tenure. “He’s the acting chief of staff, which means he’s the chief of staff. He got picked because the president liked him. They get along.”
The official said that Russ Vought, now the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, would be Mulvaney’s replacement as director, though it’s also unclear how long that might be.
Trump’s resort to a temporary chief of staff came after several candidates had declined to be considered, prompting days of embarrassing publicity suggesting that a once-plumb job had lost its allure in his chaotic White House. His first pick, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, quickly pulled himself out of consideration, leaving the president without a fallback.
The latest to bow out, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, did so on Friday. Trump had said last Saturday that it would be only one or two days before he found a permanent replacement for Kelly.
In tapping Mulvaney, Trump for a second time was turning to the conservative former congressman to plug a hole. Even as Mulvaney held the job as budget director, he served for more than a year as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, scaling back regulation of the financial industry from an office that he and other Republicans had opposed since its creation during the Obama administration.
Mulvaney only gave up that position on Monday, after Trump’s permanent pick for the job, Kathy Kraninger, was sworn in.