CBS News hired former President Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff and envoy to Northern Ireland Mick Mulvaney as a contributor, the network announced Tuesday.
Mulvaney made his appearance on the network to break down President Joe Biden’s recent budget proposal for the 2023 fiscal year, which plans to incorporate a minimum 20% wealth tax for Americans with assets of over $100 million.
WATCH:
Former OMB Director @MickMulvaney, who joins CBS News as a contributor, breaks down President Biden’s tax plan on wealthy Americans pic.twitter.com/Wh1m823631
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 29, 2022
The network said the former Trump official will analyze political matters “across the network’s broadcasts and platforms,” Deadline reported. Mulvaney previously served as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director before assuming the role as chief of staff in December 2018. The former official served as Chief of Staff until March 2020, when Mark Meadows replaced him. (RELATED: Mick Mulvaney Says He Can See How People Took His News Conference The Wrong Way)
Mulvaney had been caught up in the Trump-Ukraine scandal that led to his first impeachment in 2019. At an October 2019 press conference, he claimed there was a “quid pro quo” to the White House allegedly withholding aid from Ukraine to pressure their government to launch investigations into whether the Ukrainian government-assisted Democrats in the 2016 election. He issued a statement later, arguing that his words were taken out of context and that “there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.”
Mulvaney resigned from the administration the day after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, saying the former administration”didn’t sign up for what you saw last night.” He criticized Trump’s response to the riot by calling on the former president to instruct the rioters to return home.
Political pundits and journalists immediately blasted the network, including co-founder and executive director of the Democrat Coalition Scott Dworkin, who called on the network to immediately fire Mulvaney.
“CBS needs to fire Mick Mulvaney immediately—and whoever hired him—or they will become another Fox Entertainment propaganda outlet who cannot be trusted with anything, ESPECIALLY the news. And this is the channel with 60 Minutes,” he tweeted Wednesday.
CBS needs to fire Mick Mulvaney immediately—and whoever hired him—or they will become another Fox Entertainment propaganda outlet who cannot be trusted with anything, ESPECIALLY the news. And this is the channel with 60 Minutes. https://t.co/RXHGJSAfgg
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) March 30, 2022
Salon writer and commentator Bob Cesca argued that CBS was “normalizing these villains.”
“You mean there’s no one else who’s capable of talking about this crap, CBS?” he said, according to Fox News.
“After Trump shakedown of Zelensky, Mulvaney said ‘Get over it,'” and investigative correspondent for The New York Times, Mark Mazzetti, reportedly said.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) advisor and former Daily Caller communications director Kurt Bardella argued in an L.A. Times op-ed that “the man who executed the order to withhold aid from Ukraine so his boss could try and extort President Zelensky has been rewarded with a network TV deal by a so-called news organization.”
“Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies because of sh– like this,” he wrote.