Mulvaney calls out GOP for being ‘a lot less interested’ in deficits under Trump than Obama: report

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney called out Republicans for being “a lot less interested” in deficits under President Trump than when former President Obama was in office, The Washington Post reported. 

Mulvaney spoke at the Oxford Union and said that the GOP is “very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House,” according to audio from the speech obtained by the Post. 

“The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president,” he said. “Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party.”

The acting chief of staff then added he found the $1 trillion deficit in the Trump era “extraordinarily disturbing.” But he added that neither political party cared about the deficit anymore, and the GOP is “evolving” since the president’s election. 

Mulvaney’s hourlong speech came as he went to Britain and Ireland to discuss Brexit and other issues, administration officials told the Post. Students at the event questioned him on impeachment, climate change and trade policy. 

“We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing,” Mulvaney said to a question on climate change, prompting the audience to laugh.

Mulvaney also went after former chief of staff John Kelly for taking his arguments with the president public in his overseas speech. 

“A life expectancy of a chief of staff is roughly 18 months,” he said. “Generally speaking, this job does not last that long … Who knows how much longer I’m going to last?”