President Donald Trump's controversial chief of staff is building a personal "fiefdom" within the West Wing for far-right policy, The Washington Postreported on Saturday.
Former Tea Party lawmaker Mick Mulvaney, who is on leave from his job as budget director to serve as chief of staff, has largely consolidated power within the administration.
One senior administration official described his growing power center as "his own fiefdom."
A second White House official described it as "building an empire for the right wing.”
Mulvaney's efforts have been focused on ignoring Trump's tweeting to focus on slashing governmental regulations.
"He has helped install more than a dozen ideologically aligned advisers in the West Wing since his December hiring. Cabinet members are pressed weekly on what regulations they can strip from the books and have been told their performance will be judged on how many they remove," The Post reported. "Policy and spending decisions are now made by the White House and dictated to Cabinet agencies, instead of vice versa. When Mulvaney cannot be in the Oval Office for a policy meeting, one of his allies is usually there."
The newspaper noted Mulvaney was "a bomb-throwing conservative" when he was in Congress, which alienated both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
"Democrats openly disdain him as a saboteur, while many key Republicans distrust his willingness to compromise, particularly on fiscal policy. Some GOP senators freely signal they would rather deal with any other administration official than him," The Post reported.
Even with enemies on Capitol Hill, Mulvaney is still finding achieving victories for the far-right.
"Mulvany’s biggest successes so far have come in deregulation efforts, where he prods agencies to move faster in case Trump loses or Democrats win the Senate in 2020, advisers say. Aside from the domestic policy shop, Mulvaney has also tapped allies to fill roles in the White House’s legislative affairs operation, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and his old haunts at OMB. He regularly suggests ideas to all of them," The Post noted.
Read the full report.