If you’re new on the job and your boss is a tyrannical creep who yells at you that you’re fucking everything up, you could be a personal assistant in Los Angeles. Or you could be President Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who, according to Axios, appeared to have gone but two days into the position before Trump reprimanded him in front of Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer over his border wall.
The verbal berating allegedly happened at the end of a Jan. 4 meeting, during which Trump again demanded $5.7 billion for his widely unpopular wall on the southern border. During the negotiation between Trump and the Democrats, Mulvaney reportedly said that the two parties “should find a middle ground” between the $5.7 billion and the Democrats’ counteroffer for $1.3 billion. That’s when Trump reportedly “cut [Mulvaney] off,” according to Axios, and told him, “You just fucked it all up, Mick.”
Following Axios’ report, CNN reported that Trump told Mulvaney, “Stop, stop, just stop—What are you doing? You’re fucking it all up, Mick.”
Axios’ source called it “kind of weird,” while a second interpreted the interaction as Trump “resetting” the negotiation after Mulvaney failed at “reading the room or the president,” who he reportedly irritated with his negotiating style. CNN’s source said it was awkward, and “I was looking down, like I couldn’t watch.”
A White House official disputed Axios’ sources, calling the reports an “exaggerated account of that exchange that doesn’t reflect the good relationship Mulvaney has built over the last two years with the President.” The two even “joked about it afterwards,” the official said. What the official didn’t dispute, however, was the very specific detail of Trump telling Mulvaney that he fucked, or was fucking, something up.
Axios went on to report that another source described Trump as “long...irritated” over Mulvaney’s initial ask for $1.6 billion for the wall last year, illustrating a president who was already frustrated with his acting chief of staff, who once called Trump’s wall idea “childish” and “absurd,” to begin with.
Mulvaney, who’s also the director of the Office of Management and Budget and previously was the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has quickly risen through the ranks in the Trump administration. But if the newly departed John Kelly (RIP) couldn’t last even two years amid attempting (and failing) to “rein Trump in,” Mick “Fucked It Up” Mulvaney, only an “acting” chief of staff, may already have his days numbered.
[h/t CNN]