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Trump has appointed Mick Mulvaney, Office of Management and Budget director, to temporarily replace John Kelly as his chief of staff. Mulvaney is a longtime friend of the financial sector and a self-described \u201cright-wing nutjob.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Mulvaney joined the Trump administration to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), tasked with protecting ordinary Americans from predatory financial firms, he was on much better terms with those financial companies and led a concerted effort to rein in the agency’s powers, hiring political appointees to do work that was once done by impartial staffers.<\/p>\n
\nI am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration….<\/p>\n
\u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
Morale at the CFPB cratered after he took over, dropping more than 25 points \u2013 significantly more than at other agencies, according to the Partnership for Public Service.<\/p>\n
A former South Carolina Congressman, Mulvaney was quite open about where his loyalties lay, telling an American Bankers Association conference in April: \u201cWe had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you\u2019re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn\u2019t talk to you.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n
\nIf you\u2019re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
When Mulvaney introduced himself to economic adviser Gary Cohn as \u201ca right-wing nutjob,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> it was clearly meant in humor, but he told<\/a> Politico he is proud of his extremism.<\/p>\n
\nI don\u2019t think anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
His budget-slashing ideas have made it into many of the administration\u2019s proposals, and he continues to push for even deeper cuts to Social Security and Medicare despite Trump\u2019s campaign promises to leave those programs alone.<\/p>\n