Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was at home in South Carolina when the raid to kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was launched, only learning about it after the fact.
According to NBC News, Mulvaney was only filled in Saturday night after President Donald Trump tweeted a teaser: “Something very big has just happened!”
It was a snub of epic proportions and a sign of just how far Mulvaney’s star has fallen. Back during the Obama administration, his then-chief of staff Bill Daley was glued to the former President’s side during the raid on Osama bin Laden.
As he is wont to do, Trump has been cooling on his chief of staff for weeks, pushed further in his dislike after Mulvaney gave a press conference where he linked withholding Ukraine military aid to investigations into the 2016 election. Mulvaney later had to walk the comments back, insisting that there was no quid pro quo.