Trump and King Charles share bond over environment, says former chief of staff

Among those who worked very closely with the new president-elect but has since fallen out with him is Mick Mulvaney. He served as Acting Chief of Staff in Trump’s first White House for 15 months – but resigned from the administration after the January 6 riots.

We began by asking if he was surprised that the events of January 6 hadn’t led to Trump being rejected by the electorate.

Mick Mulvaney: He’s going to be judged now by going forward, not by going backwards. This is an argument you had during the campaign and what a majority of Americans, he won the popular vote which is stunning to me, and said ‘you know what? Regardless of how we feel about it, we don’t care. We want this guy to be the president for the next four years’. So we’ll see what happens.

Matt Frei: What’s he going to do this time that we’re going to like or not like?

Mick Mulvaney: The tariffs are real, he likes tariffs and he will use those as leverage to get what he wants in negotiations.

Matt Frei: Higher tariffs. He’s talked about 20%, possibly higher for goods from China. That’s just going to drive up inflation and, at worst, cause a trade war, isn’t it?

Mick Mulvaney: At worst, that’s true. At best, it might be a great opportunity for British businesses to sell into the US. I actually think there’s a better chance now for a US-UK free trade agreement than there was under Biden. Trump doesn’t dislike trade deals. He dislikes multilateral trade deals.

Matt Frei: When British prime ministers get too close to American presidents, it becomes a fatal attraction. Are we going to have a rerun of that movie with Keir Starmer and Donald Trump?

Mick Mulvaney: The easy answer is to say that Trump and Starmer won’t get along because their politics are different. That is to misread Donald Trump. I think he’s got a good chance to be close with Keir Starmer if they have a chance to hit it off. Who’s your foreign secretary?

Matt Frei: David Lammy?

Mick Mulvaney: Yeah, he’s going to have a problem. Because he called him Hitler. And that’s probably a bad thing to do.

Matt Frei: And will Trump remember that?

Mick Mulvaney: Trump remembers everything.

Matt Frei: Apparently what Trump likes about Keir Starmer is that he’s a knight. Is Trump impressed by titles?

Mick Mulvaney: I will give you a real world example. And I don’t know if this got a lot of press. I’m not going to give away too much of the inside stuff of what I was doing in the White House. I think that King Charles, then Prince Charles, and Donald Trump got along better than anybody realised – because they had some things in common that they were able to talk about. And Trump is really good at this. They were interested in architecture. The King prefers a more traditional style than Trump. But it was a conversation topic. Also, Trump does great work on the environment, and his golf course up in Aberdeen is very close to a royal piece of property and they talked about environmental management. That’s how Trump works.

Matt Frei: Sorry, Mick, but on the environment – I can’t imagine two people further apart than King Charles and Donald Trump.

Mick Mulvaney: You’d be wrong about that. Donald Trump has won awards worldwide for his golf courses for environmental protection.

Matt Frei: Prime Minister Netanyahu, they don’t particularly like each other, I gather.

Mick Mulvaney: They go back and forth.

Matt Frei: Does Netanyahu get a free pass to do what he likes in Gaza and in Lebanon and in Iran?

Mick Mulvaney: Not a free pass, but the relationship between the two gentlemen is salvageable. In fact, I think it’s probably on the road to being salvaged already.

Matt Frei: If Netanyahu wants to have regime change in Iran, get rid of the ayatollahs, will Trump support him politically, militarily?

Mick Mulvaney: If we do, we won’t be the only ones.

Matt Frei: First time around, when Trump was president, there were lots of designated adults. And now there’s a worry that loyalty will be more prized than expertise or judgement or wisdom. Are there good people that he will appoint?

Mick Mulvaney: That is a good question, and it’s a question that I give a great deal of thought to. And I am concerned…

Matt Frei: Because you want to be one of them?

Mick Mulvaney: I’m not going to be one of them. But I am concerned that maybe he tired of having people in the office who would tell him things he didn’t want to hear. I’m convinced that’s one of the reasons he asked me to move on to something else. That being said, you’ve asked another question, which is will he be surrounded by good people? He will. In fact, I honestly think that having learned what he learned in the first term of his second cabinet will be better than his first. The question is, how much will he listen to them?