Back in mid-June, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney dared to cough during a press event, causing Donald Trump to fly into a rage and expel him from the room. Since then, Mulvaney did a ton of heavy-lifting in terms of using the Office of Management and Budget to direct his whole extortion of Ukraine for political dirt against Joe Biden scheme. Of course, Mulvaney also went live on national TV to tell Americans all about how Trump had … extorted Ukraine for political gain and, you know, “get over it.”

Now that impeachment is in the rear view, it’s unclear whether Trump is tossing Mulvaney for confessing to his crimes, or the coughing. Probably the coughing. In either case, Mulvaney is out as the White House chief of staff, and Republican Rep. Mark Meadows is coming in.

Trump made a point of using “acting” in describing Mulvaney’s position as he was tweeting him buh-bye, and he pointedly did not use that term in describing Meadows new role. So it seems likely that Trump is going to plunk Meadows in front of the Senate for an actual vote. Which is fine. Not only would Republicans give their blessing to a rock, or a rock with a Hitler mustache, the odds of Capitol Hill voting down one of their own is always remote.

Meadows has always earned high praise from Trump for the same reason that anyone does—he spends an inordinate amount of time praising Trump first. Not only was Meadows keep to repeating Republican talking points during the impeachment proceedings, he’s been right there for Trump on everything — including explaining how Trump’s response to the coronavirus is just so, so perfect.

It’s clear this switch has been in the works for at least a few weeks, as Meadows recently announced his mid-term retirement from the House at just the right moment to block out other candidates from filing and making it possible to fill his seat with a hand-picked successor. In the meantime, Mulvaney has been appointed as special envoy to Northern Ireland, which is … a nice distance to keep him from appearing on U.S. television. Presumably Mulvaney is also surrendering his role at the OMB, but whether Trump plans to fill that slot, or just reach into the national till with his own hands from now on, is unclear.

What is clear is that this is the absolutely perfect time to be making major changes to the top White House staff, because absolutely nothing important is happening. Oh, and as always, there is a tweet for this…

3 Chief of Staffs in less than 3 years of being President: Part of the reason why @BarackObama can't manage to pass his agenda.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2012