President Donald Trump is reportedly already complaining about his incoming acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and probably won’t be happy to learn Mulvaney once called his views on border security “childish” and “absurd.”
In a 2015 radio interview uncovered Friday by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, Mulvaney tore into the then-presidential candidate’s proposed immigration policy.
“The fence doesn’t solve the problem,” said Mulvaney, a congressman for South Carolina at the time, referring to Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Is it necessary to have one? Sure. Would it help? Sure,” Mulvaney added. “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 nominated Mulvaney to lead the Office of Management and Budget, and later appointed him to also serve as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Last week, the president announced he was appointing Mulvaney to replace his outgoing chief of staff, John Kelly.
Mulvaney tweeted it would be a “tremendous honor” to serve the president in that capacity, but he apparently didn’t always feel that way.
He called Trump “a terrible human being” just a week before the 2016 election, according to a video The Daily Beast surfaced last week. Kaczynski also reported on Monday that Mulvaney, in a previously unreported October 2016 radio interview, said Trump would be disqualified from office in “an ordinary universe.”
Mulvaney also reportedly told those around him he had no desire to become the president’s chief of staff, according to a person close to him who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.