Mulvaney: No one blames Trump for ‘coarsening’ public discourse

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that although President Trump uses coarse language at times, he is not to blame for “coarsening” public discourse.

“I don’t think anybody in the country blames the president,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think there’s more important things than who is coarsening the language.”

After CNN played a montage of Trump’s use of colorful language in public speeches, Mulvaney also noted that “the president does use coarse language in private with us.”

“The President does use coarse language in private a lot with us. … But no, I don’t think anybody blames the President of the coarsening of the language,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/OqZWhQyIuG

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 6, 2019

{mosads}Trump last week criticized Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who just took office, after she said the new Democratic majority would “go in and impeach the mothef—er.”

“I thought her comments were disgraceful,” Trump said Friday.

Mulvaney was also critical of her remark.

“I was glad to see some of my former Democrat colleagues distance themselves from that kind of language,” Mulvaney told CNN.

A number of Democrats have called the remarks “inappropriate.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said of the remark that “I wouldn’t use that language” but added that she is “not in the censorship business.”

Mulvaney, who just took over the White House chief of staff job at the beginning of the year, added that the job has been “a lot of fun” so far. Mulvaney took over from John Kelly, who called the job a “bone-crushing hard job.”

“People keep asking me, ‘I don’t know whether to congratulate you or console you?’ ” he said. “It’s actually a lot of fun. This is probably the best job that many in the White House are ever going to have. Working in the White House is a tremendous privilege and tremendous opportunity. If you do it properly it can be a lot of fun.”

“It’s actually been a lot of fun,” Mick Mulvaney says about his time so far in the position of acting chief of staff. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/bLz9vb2r2Q

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 6, 2019

He added that he approaches the job keeping in mind advice he received from James Baker, who was White House chief of staff under former President George H. W. Bush.

He said Baker told him “just remember you’re the chief of the staff, not the chief of the president. You’re not going to change the president of the United States.”

“None of us ever were able to do that, nor do we want to do that,” Mulvaney told CNN.