He faltered during this tenure when he gave a news briefing on the location of the G-7 — an appearance that degenerated into a session all about the Ukraine scandal, providing fodder for Democrats to say the White House tried to engage in a quid pro quo with Ukrainian leaders over military aid. The ensuing controversy and the White House’s walkback of Mulvaney’s comments damaged his standing inside the White House, according to Republicans close to the administration and White House officials.

Mulvaney also urged Trump late last year to shut down the government as leverage to land additional funding for a border wall, a move that backfired politically on Republicans. Trump had to reopen the government 35 days later with no tangible wins and with the distinction of overseeing the longest government shutdown in history.

One former senior administration official argued it is unfair to pin all that on Mulvaney, because Trump ultimately calls the shots. Another former official said, in the long run, it showed Trump’s base the extent to which he is willing to fight for border funding.

Mulvaney is not looking at other jobs outside the White House, according to one of his allies, and has long said he loves his job and will leave only when the president tires of him.

In recent weeks, Mulvaney has been keeping himself busy working on smaller issues within the package of spending bills that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin negotiated with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“While he does not have the authority of a traditional chief of staff, he has been able to influence certain policy and budget priorities that do not come into the line of sight for the president,” said one of the Republicans close to the White House.

He spent time calling up several conservative groups to urge them to drop their opposition to Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden, the president’s pick for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mulvaney is an old friend of Ozerden and even served as a groomsman in his wedding, yet Ozerden is the rare Trump judicial pick whose nomination is stalled in the Senate, thanks to the opposition of several conservative groups and at least two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The biggest blow to Mulvaney of late, however, was his exclusion from the decision-making process for Trump’s new deputy chief of staff for operations, a position that reports directly to Mulvaney.

The president ultimately picked a Secret Service official, Anthony Ornato, for the job after days of internal jockeying. Various aides suggested and pushed for current staffers to fill the post including Derek Lyons, Max Miller and Nick Luna. Mulvaney was not involved in the final decision, nor did the president settle on the choice the acting chief of staff advocated, according to two additional Republicans close to the White House. “He was out of the loop,” one said.

Inside the West Wing, Mulvaney does not earn the ire of staffers as Kelly did toward the end of the general’s tenure with his top-down, military approach to organization and management and his frequent clashes with Trump’s family.

Mulvaney instead is seen as a supremely confident and ambitious person who took a job few viewed as tenable and who now lives on the outskirts of the White House’s key centers of power.

“The president does not want a traditional chief of staff, plus there is Jared. There are already two chiefs: the president and his son-in-law. There is no room for a third,” said one Trump ally.

Burgess Everett, Marianne LeVine and Gabby Orr contributed to this report.