Mick Mulvaney, who served as former President Trump’s acting White House chief of staff, on Monday said he hopes Trump does not win the 2024 GOP presidential primary if he runs for reelection.
“We’ve got younger people, it’s time for Donald Trump to sort of go to the sideline, continue to push the policies that made him so popular,” Mulvaney said on NewsNation’s “Banfield.”
“We defined my party, but we can have all the policies without the baggage, so I hope he doesn’t run,” the former GOP congressman continued. “And if he runs, I hope he doesn’t win the nomination for Republicans.”
Mulvaney, who resigned as the special envoy for Northern Ireland following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, has been a regular critic of Trump since he left office.
Trump is widely seen as preparing to make a third bid for the White House in 2024. Trump has publicly said he has already made a decision, although some Republicans have called for him to wait until after the midterms to announce a campaign to avoid shifting the focus of this year’s campaign away from issues like inflation and immigration.
“He may well be the only Republican who can lose to Joe Biden or to any other Democrat in 2024,” Mulvaney said on NewsNation.
Mulvaney also predicted that other rumored GOP presidential contenders would be successful, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
“Unless there’s a dramatic change in the economy, unless the direction of the country changes, you’ve got to think that the Republican [candidate] is going to go into the 2024 presidential election as the slight favorite,” he added. “Donald Trump might be the only person who could lose that election.”
Mulvaney’s remarks come in the wake of the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in connection with its investigation into whether Trump violated the Espionage Act and other federal statutes.
Trump and many Republicans have condemned the search as being politically motivated. Some of the more heated rhetoric has led to concerns about the safety of federal law enforcement agents.