President Donald Trump has apparently long considered Mick Mulvaney to serve as White House chief of staff, and now, after numerous fits and starts to that process, Mulvaney is finally set to replace John Kelly in that role.
Trump announced via Twitter on Friday afternoon that he is naming Mulvaney as the “acting” White House chief of staff. According to Trump, Mulvaney will officially take over as chief of staff when Kelly leaves the administration at the end of this year.
Back in February, reports surfaced that Trump was asking advisers what they thought of Mulvaney as a replacement for Kelly. Then, rumors began to circulate over the summer that Kelly could announce his departure in July, leaving Mulvaney as the frontrunner for the position.
That turned out to be false hope, for the time being anyway, because just a few months ago, Kelly declared he was staying until 2020.
But my how things can change in four months.
Now, Kelly is set to step down and Mulvaney is set to step in.
….I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! John will be staying until the end of the year. He is a GREAT PATRIOT and I want to personally thank him for his service!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2018
No word as of yet on whether Mulvaney will continue to serve as Office of Management and Budget director as well, nor is there any indication as to how long Mulvaney will serve as “acting” chief of staff.
Until recently, Mulvaney had two prominent jobs in the administration, serving as both the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
But he cut back to one job just a few days ago when Kathy Kraninger was sworn in as the permanent director of the CFPB.
Now, Mulvaney will take over as chief of staff, having apparently carved out quite a role for himself in the Trump administration.
His time at the CFPB was marked by significant changes to the agency.
Mulvaney told the CFPB’s employees that the agency was ending regulation by enforcement, adding that the agency works not only for consumers, but also for the companies it supervises.
Mulvaney also reportedly stripped the bureau’s Office of Fair Lending of its enforcement powers, announced that the CFPB would “reconsider” its payday lending rules, defanged the changes in Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting that were to take effect this year, reportedly put the brakes on the agency’s investigation into the massive data breach at Equifax, and numerous other steps to defang the bureau.
And soon, he’ll be Trump’s right-hand man in the White House.
