Donald Trump goes berserk in all caps about Mick Mulvaney
When Mick Mulvaney publicly confessed that Donald Trump was guilty yesterday, some observers asked if it was some kind of clever scheme that would make Trump’s impeachment troubles magically go away. We knew it was no such thing, because even if it was an intentional scheme, it was a dumb one that would only make things worse. This was confirmed when Mulvaney tried to pretend a few hours later that he never said any of it.
Donald Trump didn’t scapegoat and fire Mick Mulvaney this morning, despite some expectation that he might. It wasn’t clear if this was because Trump had strategically decided that it was better to keep Mulvaney in the fold so he wouldn’t flip, or if Trump was just being his usual tepid and indecisive self. But tonight Trump posted a tweet about Mulvaney that may offer a clue about where this is headed:
“The President never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server. The only reason we were holding the money was because of concern about LACK OF SUPPORT FROM OTHER NATIONS and CONCERNS OVER CORRUPTION.” Yesterday’s Mick Mulvaney statement
This is in fact an accurate representation of Mulvaney’s statement – except that Donald Trump has taken the berserk step of adding a bunch of capital letters to the statement. In any case, the real upshot here is that a day and a half later, Trump is worried about the Mulvaney debacle enough that he’s still trying to push back against the fact that Mulvaney admitted he was guilty. If Trump is still this worried about it… let’s just say that perhaps Mulvaney has something to worry about as well. We’ll see.
