The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life hosted Mick Mulvaney, former chief of staff under President Donald Trump’s first administration, on Tuesday as part of its Solomont Speaker Series. The talk was moderated by Eitan Hersh, a professor of political science at Tufts and an advocate for bipartisan discourse, who teaches a course on modern American conservatism, the first of its kind in the United States.
Before his role as chief of staff from January 2019 to March 2020, Mulvaney served as a U.S. representative from South Carolina. Mulvaney also served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term.
In May 2020, he became the special envoy to Northern Ireland, but he resigned following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mulvaney was asked about drastic government cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency, given his time as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney praised DOGE for popularizing spending reduction.
“I like the fact that they have made government efficiency versus government waste popular. I tried to do that,” Mulvaney answered. “The last person who President Trump asked to restructure the federal government was me back in 2018, and I failed miserably.”
While he praised Elon Musk, the department’s leader, for his success, Mulvaney believes current spending cuts have been too little or even counterproductive.
“They won’t be able to deliver a trillion dollars in savings. That’s not possible, they don’t have the authority to do that,” he said. “Even if you save money, if you give people checks, it’s inflationary and adds to the deficit anyway, which defeats the whole purpose.”
Mulvaney also discussed Trump’s tariffs. He expressed mixed feelings, unable to justify tariffs on all affected countries.
“I get the stuff on Mexico. It’s drugs, human smuggling and immigration. I even get the exchange he had in the White House last week with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy,” he said. “I don’t get the Canadian thing. I don’t get it.”
Mulvaney theorized that Trump’s placement of tariffs on Canadian goods may have resulted from a personal dislike of departing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He also mentioned that the president often seemed to choose allies based on personal preference over policy.
“He didn’t dislike [former German Chancellor] Angela Merkel because of her political perspective,” Mulvaney said.” “He just didn’t like her. He didn’t like [former Japanese Prime Minister] Shinzo Abe because of his political perspective. He just liked him. We’re all like that, I think. We like people for different reasons.”
In a smaller private session with the Tufts Federalist Society and Tufts Republicans before the main event, Mulvaney talked more about his personal relationship with Trump. He claimed that the president never asked him to do anything illegal, but he would often pit his advisors against each other.
In terms of international policy, Mulvaney offered his prediction on how the Russia-Ukraine war will end.
“Either Russia takes over all of Ukraine, which I don’t think is likely, Ukraine gets all of its territory back, which I don’t think is likely, [or] there’s a literal forever war in that part of the world, which I really don’t think anybody wants,” he said. “The most likely outcome is loss of some territory, ceasefire, closer relationships with the West.”
Mulvaney was less certain about the outcome of the war in Gaza.
“I have no idea how it ends up,” he said. “Gaza has the ability to either be Beirut in 1978 or Beirut today.”
Mulvaney additionally implored Tufts students to forge relationships with those they politically disagree with.
“If you can’t be friends with somebody in the Republican club because they are in the Republican club, you got a problem,” he said. “That’s what keeps me up at night.”
Jonathan Chin, a sophomore who attended Mulvaney’s smaller session, was impressed with Mulvaney as a speaker.
“I thought it was really insightful,” he said. “He definitely knows what he’s talking about.”
The event concluded with Zac Colah, a junior majoring in international relations, yelling insults and expletives at Mulvaney as he and Hersh walked off the stage.
“I was just honestly surprised that there was no organized effort to protest the event,” Colah said in an interview with the Daily. “I think pretty despicable individuals like him shouldn’t be able to really leave their houses without being ridiculed in the street, or at least having that as a possibility. Personally, I have no respect for him, and he was so unapologetic, too, about all of his untruths that he said. The least you can do is call him a f---face.”
