In Donald Trump’s first term, there was a running joke about the number of jobs the president assigned to Mick Mulvaney. In early 2017, for example, Trump tapped the then-congressman to serve as the White House budget director. In time, Mulvaney also led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And served as White House chief of staff. And became the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland.
To be sure, it became amusing to see just how many hats the far-right South Carolinian ended up wearing, but what was especially notable about Mulvaney’s tenure was that he occasionally wore more than one hat at the same time. For most of 2018, for example, he led both the Office of Management and Budget and the CFPB. In 2019, Mulvaney was both the White House budget director and the president’s chief of staff.
It was an odd and unprecedented governing dynamic, but it also served as a reminder that Trump occasionally likes it when prominent members of his team are assigned to do more than one job simultaneously.
In his second term, the president is doing it again.
As this week got underway, Trump launched an effort to oust Hampton Dellinger as the head of an independent ethics agency called the Office of Special Counsel (not to be confused with the Justice Department’s special counsels). As The Washington Post reported, the president soon after chose Dellinger’s successor, and it was a familiar name.
President Donald Trump on Monday signed documents designating former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Georgia) — who earlier this month became the secretary of veterans affairs — to be the acting leader of the Office of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics.
As it turns out, the announcement was largely moot: Dellinger filed suit and was reinstated by a federal judge who agreed that Trump’s firing failed to follow the law. But the underlying point remains the same: The president thought it made sense to have Collins serve as both the Veterans Affairs secretary and the head of the Office of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics.
Just so we’re clear, leading the Department of Veterans Affairs is a big, important, incredibly challenging and time-consuming job. But in Trump’s vision, Collins could do that job while simultaneously taking on additional responsibilities at an entirely unrelated office.
Collins isn’t alone. Senate Republicans recently made Russell Vought the White House budget director, for example, but that didn’t stop Trump from also tapping Vought to serve as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, mirroring Mulvaney’s dual responsibilities from eight years ago.
What’s more, the president announced last week that he was bringing the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to heel, ousting much of its board and installing a new chairman. Four days later, Trump published a message to his social media platform, introducing the center’s temporary new chief. “I am pleased to announce that Ric Grenell will serve as the Interim Executive Director of The Kennedy Center,” the president wrote. “Ric shares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture, and will be overseeing the daily operations of the Center. NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA — ONLY THE BEST. RIC, WELCOME TO SHOW BUSINESS!” I won’t pretend to know why Trump believes that the Kennedy Center has been home to “anti-American propaganda” — he’s already admitted that he hasn’t seen any productions at the venue — but what struck me as notable about this is that Grenell already has a job: Trump announced in December that Grenell would be the “Presidential Envoy for Special Missions,” working in “some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.” Evidently, in between trips abroad, Grenell, the latest member of the Moonlighting Caucus, will also oversee the Kennedy Center.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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