‘Completely Incompetent’ or ‘Having a Nervous Breakdown’: Mulvaney Wonders About Mark Meadows’s State of Mind on Jan. 6

Former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney lit into another former Trump Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, while commenting on Tuesday’s bombshell testimony to the Jan. 6 committee from Cassidy Hutchinson – a former aide to Meadows.

“Cassidy Hutchinson gave some remarkable testimony about Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, seemingly unwilling to engage,” Jake Tapper began, while interviewing Mulvaney on CNN Wednesday.

“What did you make of her recollection that, you know, she or Tony Ornato or Pat Cipollone, people were trying to tell him things and he was sitting on a sofa, scrolling on his phone, unresponsive, especially, you know, when the Secret Service and she were trying to tell Meadows about the threat of violence,” Tapper asked about Meadow’s state of mind ahead of Jan. 6.

“That struck me personally. That was my sofa. I’ve used that sofa and it was my office. It was my fireplace he was sitting by,” Mulvaney replied.

“I understand exactly what that, what the dynamics are there and the visual image of Cassidy coming to the, to the door maybe with Pat there, maybe Pat there a little bit afterward and trying to talk to Mark and Mark not even looking up, according to Cassidy, and just staring at his phone,” he continued.

“And then they have to sort of interrupt him to make sure he’s paying attention. It sends a very disturbing image of what the West Wing was like,” Mulvaney added.

“I was actually texting with a colleague of mine who was in the West Wing at the time, and I said, ‘Look, was Mark just completely incompetent or was he having a nervous breakdown?’” Mulvaney added, further expressing his disbelief in Meadows’s behavior.

“And the response was that it was a little bit of both. The West Wing was clearly broken, clearly broken. And the testimony yesterday actually made me feel bad for some of the good people who were still there to have to work in that environment with a chief of staff who was so obviously disengaged,” he added.

“Again, according to what Cassidy said yesterday, very, very disturbing for me to hear that as a former chief of staff,” Mulvaney concluded.

Watch the full interview via CNN