Former Trump chief of staff says Republicans can 'kiss the midterms goodbye'

It may already be too late for Republicans to keep both chambers of Congress under their control after this November's midterm elections, according to one of President Donald Trump's former chiefs of staff.

In a Friday interview with NewsNation's Connell McShane, Mick Mulvaney — who served as acting White House chief of staff in President Donald Trump's first administration for more than a year — said the racist AI-generated video Trump posted to his Truth Social account on Thursday night may be the final nail in the coffin for Republicans' midterm hopes this fall.

In the video, former First Couple Barack and Michelle Obama are depicted as apes while the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is heard in the background. The post was eventually deleted 12 hours after it was posted to Trump's Truth Social account following massive bipartisan blowback, but Mulvaney said the Trump administration's bungling of the resulting fallout could lead to a significant political cost for Republicans at the polls.

"This ad is going to be replayed in every single one of the House and Senate races going into these midterms," he said. "The first thing that came to my mind after I got over the shock of this is, 'oh my goodness, you can kiss the midterms goodbye.'"

Mulvaney was also skeptical of the Trump administration's explanation that an unnamed staffer posted the video without the president's permission. He said that while some people like White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and Trump aide Natalie Harp have access to Trump's social media accounts, it's incumbent on the person responsible to be publicly named and fired.

"Let me put my old chief of staff hat on for a second, because it's entirely possible this was a staffer," he said. "... But if I'm the chief of staff, I'm coming out today on television, I'm saying, 'look, it was a staffer, this is the staffer,' I would name the staffer, and this staffer is no longer working here. And at the end of the day, I would go to the president and tender my resignation. Offer to resign. Because if you're the chief of staff, and the staff is doing this, then you have a problem amongst your staff. That's how you handle this situation."

"This is clearly a self-inflicted wound ... you couldn't handle it any more badly than they have," he added.

Mulvaney noted that Trump could have spent Friday talking about the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaking the 50,000 mark, or his new TrumpRx program aimed at lowering the costs of prescription drugs, but called those the "biggest lost messages of the day, because of the tweet."

"White suburban women are the people who are going to react to this more than people realize," Mulvaney said. "People don't want to vote for a party they think is racist. They just don't ... But if you are running for office as a Republican, you better figure out how you're going to handle this, because you are going to see it more than once between now and November."

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