Mick Mulvaney’s very candid and very public admission of a quid pro quo with Ukraine might seem like another blow to Donald Trump’s presidency and reelection bid. But in a very on-brand move, his campaign has made lemons into $30 T-shirts.
The new apparel blares an all-caps message straight from the acting White House chief of staff himself: “GET OVER IT.”
“America is ready for Congress to get back to work,” the merchandise’s description reads. “No more WITCH HUNTS! President Trump won in 2016 and he is going to win even bigger in 2020.”
Mulvaney uttered the now-infamous phrase during a Thursday press conference a little more than 24 hours before the shirts went on sale — yet again showing the Trump campaign’s ability to seize upon political moments and turn them into moneymaking gimmicks.
During the briefing, Mulvaney told reporters that U.S. military aid was temporarily withheld from Ukraine because of Trump’s suspicion that it would be irresponsibly spent. But he went on to say that Trump expressed additional concern over “corruption that related to the [Democratic National Committee] server,” referring to a disproven conspiracy theory that Ukraine perpetrated the 2016 Democratic Party email hack. The U.S. intelligence community has made clear its belief that Russia was the culprit.
After Mulvaney said that “what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that [Trump] was worried about in corruption” in Ukraine, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl pointed out that Mulvaney was outlining a quid pro quo.
The acting chief of staff didn’t appear to see the problem.
“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” he shot back. “I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”
Shortly after the conference, Mulvaney released a statement denying that there was ever a quid pro quo, attempting to reverse his earlier remarks.
Trump and his allies have also repeatedly denied a quid pro quo, and the contradiction between those claims and Mulvaney’s “get over it” statement drew skepticism from one of the president’s major defenders, Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
“What is Mulvaney even talking about?” Hannity asked on his radio show on Thursday. “I just think he’s dumb, I really do. I don’t even think he knows what he’s talking about.”
For now, the messaging mix-up has been fashioned into a campaign tagline.