Mick Mulvaney says he hopes Trump loses GOP nomination for 2024

Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former acting chief of staff, said Monday that he hopes the former president does not run again in 2024, and if he does he loses the GOP nomination. 

‘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’ Monday.  

‘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 served as Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director from February 2017 to March 2020 and as his acting chief of staff from January 2019 to March 2020. He then became Special Envoy to northern Ireland, a position he resigned from following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. 

‘He may well be the only Republican who can lose to Joe Biden or any other Democrat in 2024,’ Mulvaney said of Trump. 

The former chief of staff floated names like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Sen. Tim Scott, former Sec. of State Mike Pompeo and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley who he said would be better suited to win a GOP nomination. 

Pressed on whether he would vote for Trump if Trump did win the GOP nomination, he said, ‘It would be really hard, knowing what I know about January 6th.’ 

Mulvaney’s remarks come in the aftermath of the unprecedented FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, which Mulvaney said could be one of the ‘greatest overreaches.’ 

‘If the FBI doesn’t find a cold body or a smoking gun, then I think this will go down as one of the greatest overreaches in law enforcement history,’ he said. ‘You don’t get to go into a former president’s house because of just technical document violations. There has to be something really serious there. I can’t imagine what that might be.’

Trump has all but announced a decision to run for the presidency in 2024, and has said that he’s already made up his mind and plans to make a formal announcement on his decision soon. 

The warrant used in the raid was released on Friday, showing that the FBI clawed back 11 sets of classified documents. But the affidavit used in the warrant would give much more detail about what the agency was actually looking for and Trump has called for its ‘unredacted’ release. 

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday opposed requests to unseal the affidavit used to justify last week’s bombshell search by the bureau.

The Justice Department noted in a filing with a US District Court the search warrant and a receipt for items seized from Mar-a-Lago have already been made public.

But it argued the affidavit, which lays out the FBI´s probable cause argument for why the search warrant should be approved, presented a ‘very different set of considerations.’

The department said: ‘There remain compelling reasons, including to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security, that support keeping the affidavit sealed.’

It said the government had ‘a compelling, overriding interest in preserving the integrity of an ongoing criminal investigation’.

The affidavit, it added, contained ‘critically important and detailed investigative facts’ as well as ‘highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government.’

The Justice Department said should the court order the release of the affidavit, the required redactions would ‘be so extensive as to render the remaining unsealed text devoid of meaningful content.’