President Donald Trump’s incoming acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that he and Trump “joked” about critical comments Mulvaney made about Trump in 2016.
Mulvaney’s comments were made during a campaign debate in 2016 with his then-Democratic challenger for South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District seat. In a video of the debate posted by The Daily Beast earlier this month, Mulvaney can be heard saying that he was supporting Trump for president “as enthusiastically as I can, given the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being, but the choice on the other side is just as bad.”
When asked on Sunday by ABC’s Jonathan Karl on “This Week” if he had recently spoken to the President about the comments, Mulvaney replied: “Sure. We joked about it last night.”
“So look – I think the President – what’s wrong with Washington, DC – people spend a lot more time looking at what people say instead of what they do,” said Mulvaney, who currently serves as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
“I think my actions for the last two years – in fact I know they have because I asked the President about this. He knows that I’ve been fighting with him to fight for ordinary Americans for the last two years. He likes having me around and I like working for him,” he added.
Mulvaney also said in an October 2016 radio interview that Trump’s past words and actions would disqualify him from becoming president in an “ordinary universe.”
CNN’s Sophie Tatum and Andrew Kaczynski contributed to this report.