if you recall, when speaker ryan became speaker, he did so as an act of public service. he didn t want the job. yeah. it s a thankless job. you get no credit for what you do. he was the head of a conference that was diverse and wanted a lot of different things from him. the conversation of entitlements and spending and debt would be different without speaker ryan. he was able to offer leadership on issues. we went have the lexicon to talk about tackling these problems if we didn t have his leadership. for too often, we look at full scale big picture reform without looking at what we need to get done. neil: and he started it. give him credit. i remember distinctly when he was trying to reign in the growth of medicare. forget about cutting. just the growth. and the famous ads that he was
decided not to take on this job as chief of staff. so it sounds as though, unless the president and mick mulvaney come to an agreement and decide he ll stay on on a permanent basis, this is sort of a band-aid decided on by the president earlier here today. brianna? jim, thank you so much. let s bring in our panel to discuss more about this. dana bash, you heard jim. mick mulvaney did not want this job. this is acting, but what do you make of this? interim, right? yes, exactly. look, the president has made clear, and people who are close to him have told him, the best thing you can do right now is somebody who has hill experience. or at least relationships on capitol hill. mick mulvaney was a conservative fire brand. is a conservative fire brand. but when your conservative fire brand on capitol hill, it means your relationships are mostly not entirely, but mostly with fellow republicans. i m not sure how this helps with the new house democratic
you have to remember, at what point in time that this matter came about. two weeks or so before the election, post the billy bush comments. so, yes. he was very concerned about how this would affect the election. reporter: despite all of the investigations now touching the trump organization, foundation, campaign, inauguration, transition and administration, the white house is brushing off cohen s comments, saying they shouldn t be taken seriously. he s a self-admitted liar. you know that. and for him to say i m going to stop lying now, starting now, is somewhat silly. reporter: but cracks may be starting to form under the president s feet. consider those gop lawmakers all but lining up to back the president earlier this week as senator orrin hatch did with cnn s manu raju. the democrats will do anything to hurt this democrat. but this is not the democrats. this is the southern district of new york. i don t care. all i can say is he s doing a good job as president.
has been, be even if he doesn t have to hear it from a lawyer. you know, he sees it. and he likes to play with the news cycle, and he has the ability to do that, as any president does. in this case, it just so happens that he does need a chief of staff. he was telling the candidates he was talking to that he hopes to come up with a final decision by next week. maybe that didn t happen, and he just had to convince mick mulvaney, obviously, to at least take it temporarily, since he s the closest thing to it already in a white house job. but i wonder, gloria, how much this can distract from some serious headlines this week, legally for the president, implicated by michael cohen s felony plea. pled guilty to two felony counts, among others. but two that implicated the president. this is just a temporary staffing assignment. it s an important position. but this does not really eclipse what happened this week. no.
his service. a couple of things, brianna. we were hearing from sources that mick mulvaney was not interested in this job. that he was interested in perhaps being treasury secretary or commerce secretary or serving in another function in the government. but i know, you know, having dealt with mick mulvaney at the white house and talking who various officials, he is seen as one of the people over here who kind of keeps the trains running on time. and so it s not really a surprise mick mulvaney s name has come up before when reince priebus left the white house, his name came up. and through all of these news cycles where we thought general kelly might not make it, mick mulvaney s name would pop up again. so it s not surprising the president would make this selection. i do think it s interesting and maybe a little odd he is being named on a temporary basis, brianna. i think it goes back to this notion that the white house just did not have a plan b when nick ayers, the vice president s chi