Everyday the White House briefing is another lesson in rewriting Trump's history and Tuesday's extravaganza with Budget Director Mick Mulvaney was no exception. The only difference between Mulvaney and Spicey was that the budget chief was making his inaugural run at lying through his teeth and it showed. In fact, Mulvaney looked like he might have a heart attack on the spot as he sputtered from one trumped-up claim to the next about how great the Trump administration is doing.
"We are competent, and we know what we’re doing, and the country is safe in our hands,” Mulvaney assured reporters. He actually prefaced that declaration with, "I think the message we are sending is ..."
Uh-huh …
But wait ...
The "we haven't done the math" section came amid Mulvaney's lengthy explanation of where things stood with the wall even though his entire briefing was about a trillion-dollar spending bill that included a measly $350 million to augment some fencing at the southern border.
Amid his “competence” briefing, Mulvaney made sure to have helpful visuals ...
Thanks for that clarity.
Anyway, Mulvaney's main point was that even though Trump got shut out of the billions he asked for to build his wall, there were several hundred million dollars in taxpayer funds going toward the steel wall.
“That’s what we got in this deal and that’s what Democrats don’t want you to know,” Mick Mulvaney, director of the president’s budget office, said at the daily White House press briefing. [...]
“We are building this now,” he said.
If you haven't figured it out by now, the White House is feeling a bit sensitive about their wanting negotiating skills and what they were able to squeeze out of the spending bill. But why dance around it? Mulvaney just came right out and said it.
Finally, Mulvaney hit it out of the park when he explained Trump's morning tweet cheering a shutdown.
"What I think you heard the president express this morning was frustration over how he's been treated as part of the negotiation," he said, adding, "if things don't get better” they might “get to that point."
Bottom line: Trump's pissy because he got outmaneuvered in the spending negotiations, everyone has reported as much, and he looks like a fool.
Behold the competence, folks. Behold.