“I Can’t Stay” – Mick Mulvaney Quits Trump Administration Post Over Capitol Chaos

Though the market was seemingly unshaken by the events of yesterday,a handful of Trump Administration staffers have resigned over Wednesday’s storming of Capitol Hill, blaming President Trump for not doing enough to call off the crowds.

In one particularly public display, Mick Mulvaney, who has been serving in a part-time role (special envoy to Ireland) since departing as acting chief of staff, appeared on CNBC to announce his resignation, saying he had left a message with his boss Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

During a sometimes rambling interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernan, Mulvaney insisted that he couldn’t stay after what had happened, though he acknowledged that his small role has little impact on the administration. However, he said “it’s what I have got.”

“I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning from that. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mick Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney said he had spoken to others who were choosing to stay, and insisted that some “are choosing to stay because they’re worried the president might put someone worse in.”

Continuing on the subject of staffers resigning in protest, Mulvaney suggested (and another source reportedly told CNBC’s Eamon Javers) that National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien was weighing a resignation over the ordeal at the Capitol after siding with VP Pence. O’Brien’s deputy, Matthew Pottinger, has reportedly resigned. Two other high-profile staffers, including Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff for first lady Melania Trump, and Sarah Matthews, White House deputy press secretary, also resigned Wednesday. Commerce Department official John Costello also resigned Thursday morning.

Once one of Trump’s closest aides, Mulvaney said that the president is “not the same” as we was 8 months ago. Over the past year or so, Trump has allowed Rudy Giuliani, Pete Navarro and other extremists (to be fair, Mulvaney has a record of clashing with them during his time in the West Wing) to unduly influence him.

“We didn’t sign up for what you saw last night,” Mulvaney said. “We signed up for making America great again, we signed up for lower taxes and less regulation. The president has a long list of successes that we can be proud of.”

He insisted that Trump had “many successes” during his four years in office, but now “the folks who spent time away from our families, put our careers on the line to go work for Donald Trump, and we did have those successes to look back at, but now it will always be, ‘Oh yeah, you work to the guy who tried to overtake the government.'”