Former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday that he hopes former President Donald Trump doesn’t run for office again and that the Republican Party doesn’t “need him.”
In an interview with CNN, Mulvaney said that a “new generation” of Republicans can support the same policies as Trump without the “baggage.” The former White House aide also said that he would be “hard pressed” to vote for Trump in 2024 and that he believes the House Jan. 6 committee has wounded Trump politically, clearing the way for other Republicans to enter the 2024 GOP presidential primary fray.
“I’m one of those Republicans who hope the former president, Trump, doesn’t run,” he said.
“In all fairness, we don’t need him anymore. He changed our party. We have a lot of folks, a new generation, Ron Desantis, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, go down the list, of folks who can give us the same policies, the same energy, the same defense of the middle class, that Donald Trump gave us without the baggage,” Mulvaney said.
MICK MULVANEY: TRUMP WHITE HOUSE ‘FELL APART’ UNDER MARK MEADOWS
The former Republican congressman for South Carolina and former special envoy to Northern Ireland added that he believes Trump is the only GOP presidential candidate that President Joe Biden, or whomever the Democrats nominate in 2024, can beat.
“I mean, face it, as a Republican, I’m sitting here tonight thinking to myself if the election were today and Joe Biden was the nominee for the Democrats, or Kamala Harris, or Gavin Newsom, there’s probably only one mainstream Republican who can lose. And that’s Donald Trump,” Mulvaney said.
He also explained that he believes the House Jan. 6 committee has done irreparable damage to Trump’s chances in 2024 and that since the televised committee hearings began in June, “top-tier” Republicans have begun to consider challenging Trump in the presidential primary.
“Knowing what I know now, I would be really hard-pressed to support Trump again,” Mulvaney said, adding that he thinks “we’ve moved beyond Donald Trump clearing the field” of GOP challengers.
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The former Trump adviser said that while he doesn’t believe the former president will face any jail time as a result of the evidence presented during the House investigation into the Capitol riot, the biggest outcome of the hearings may be that they have mortally wounded Trump’s 2024 White House aspirations.
The 45th president is reportedly mulling over whether he will announce his 2024 candidacy before the November midterm elections.
