President Donald Trump ripped Mick Mulvaney in front of Democratic leaders over his new chief of staff's handling of shutdown negotiations, according to a new report.
Trump's frustration boiled over during a Jan. 4 meeting in the White House situation room, where he and Mulvaney were meeting Congressional leaders of both parties to discuss border wall funding, Axios reported Sunday night.
After Trump repeated his demand for $5.7 billion to build the wall, Mulvaney suggested the White House would be open to a figure somewhere between the president's wish and Democrats' offer of $1.3 billion.
"Trump cut him off ... 'You just f---ked it all up, Mick,'" a source who was present in the room told Axios. "It was kind of weird."
According to the Axios report, that account was confirmed by another source who was also in the room. The second source said Trump had become irritated with Mulvaney's negotiating tactics.
Mulvaney took over as chief of staff when John Kelly left the administration earlier this month. A former Congressman from South Carolina, he has worn several hats in the Trump administration including White House budget director, his original post, and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for much of 2018.
Mulvaney is one of a small number of senior Trump aides who joined at the outset of the administration and is still serving. However, he has not always been on the same page as Trump when it comes to one of the president's signature policy items — the border wall.
Before joining the administration, Mulvaney described Trump's fixation on a border wall as an "almost childish" solution to illegal immigration.
"Is it necessary to have one? Sure. Would it help? Sure," Mulvaney told a South Carolina radio station. "But to just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone running for president to take that simplistic of [a] view."
Trump is frustrated that Mulvaney's 2019 White House budget proposal included just $1.6 billion for the border wall, according to the Axios report. That sum, which Trump himself approved, is far less than the $5.7 billion the president is now demanding as the price to end the partial government shutdown.
Now in its fourth week, the shutdown appears no closer to ending than it did when it began. Trump has refused to budge from his position because he views the shutdown as the last chance to pry substantial wall funding from Congress during this term. Democrats, meanwhile, are unanimous in their opposition to including wall funding in a spending bill that would re-open the government.
Trump's outburst at Mulvaney is one reason why negotiations between the White House and Democratic leadership have broken down, according to Axios' White House correspondent Jonathan Swan.
"Trump's willingness to humiliate his top staffer in front of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi is another reminder — beyond Democratic unwillingness to fund a barrier — of why shutdown talks have made zero progress: Trump exhibits little regard for the credibility of his own deputies," Swan wrote.
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