Trump names budget director Mick Mulvaney as chief of staff

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday picked budget director Mick Mulvaney to be his acting chief of staff, ending a chaotic search in which several top contenders took themselves out of consideration for the job.

Trump tweeted that Mulvaney will replace his current chief of staff, John Kelly, "who has served our country with distinction."

Trump announced last week that Kelly, who served in the role for more than a year, would soon be departing.

Trump, in his tweet Friday, thanked Kelly for his service, calling him "a great patriot."

Though deemed an "acting" chief of staff, Mulvaney's term will be open-ended, according to a senior White House official. The position does not require congressional approval.

3rd Trump administration appointment

Key to Trump's selection: Mulvaney and the president get along and Trump has appreciated how the budget director briefs him, according to a senior White House official. Additionally, Trump prized the former congressman's knowledge of Capitol Hill and his political instincts as the White House prepares for both a Democratic-controlled House and the president's upcoming re-election campaign.

Unlike with Kelly's appointment, Mulvaney received the news before the president tweeted his announcement. Trump and Mulvaney met face to face Friday afternoon and spoke by phone in the evening, according to a second White House official.

After the announcement, Mulvaney tweeted, "I look forward to working with the President and the entire team. It's going to be a great 2019!"

Mulvaney, who will be Trump's third chief of staff, will now take on his third job in the administration. He heads the Office of Management and Budget, and for a time had simultaneously led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Russell Vought, Mulvaney's deputy, is to take over at the OMB.

It was unclear why Mulvaney's appointment was announced as temporary — but that decision was made by the president, the first official said. The senior White House source added that Kelly was happy with the choice of Mulvaney and plans to stay on through the end of the year to assist with the transition.

A former Tea Party congressman, Mulvaney was among a faction on the hard right that bullied Republican leaders into a 2013 government shutdown confrontation by insisting on lacing a must-pass spending bill with provisions designed to cripple former president Barack Obama's signature health-care law.

Candidates remove themselves from consideration

The appointment of the affable, fast-talking South Carolinian came just hours after another candidate for the post, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, took himself out of contention for the job. Christie cited family reasons in a statement saying that he was asking Trump to remove him from consideration.

He had met with Trump on Thursday to discuss the job, according to a person familiar with the meeting who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The president's hunt for a new chief reverted to square one last weekend when Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, took himself out of the running and decided that he would instead leave the White House.

Ayers, who had cited family concerns as a reason why he didn't accept the post, tweeted Friday: "The right father of triplets got the job." Both men are, coincidentally, fathers of triplets.

Trump's first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, served for six months before leaving in July 2017.

Kelly, Preibus's replacement, had some success streamlining the decision-making process in the West Wing and curtailing access to the president. But Trump grew weary of those restrictions and Kelly's influence waned as the two men frequently clashed.

The wild process was hardly a novelty for the Trump administration, which has struggled with high staff turnover and attracting top talent, but it underscored the tumult of Trump's Washington. In past administrations, chief of staff was a sought-after job, typically awarded after a careful process. Now, many view the job as a risky proposition, given Trump's propensity for disorder and his resistance to being managed.

Author Chris Whipple, an expert on chiefs of staff, had called the search process "sad to watch."

"In his first two years, Trump devalued the position by failing to empower anyone to perform the job, and now he's turned the search for a replacement into a reality show," said Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers, a book on the subject.

"The only thing more broken and dysfunctional than the White House itself seems to be the search for the new White House chief of staff."