“They’ll all be fired by me. I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.”
So said Anthony Scaramucci in a jaw-dropping interview that the Manhasset resident and the now-former White House Director of Communications gave to New Yorker magazine last week.
And indeed, Priebus was soon fired from his chief of staff position and replaced by Gen. John Kelly, head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
But then, what went around came around. Kelly, according to published reports, recommended that Scaramucci be fired from his post and that is exactly what happened this past Monday as the latter tendered his resignation to President Donald J. Trump.
Ears are still ringing from the tongue-lashing that Scaramucci delivered in that same interview, one directed toward certain White House aides. Scaramucci used an expletive-deleted broadside to lambaste both Priebus and senior aide, Steve Bannon in an interview that sealed Preibus’s fate and, as it turned out, Scaramucci’s as well.
During the interview, Scaramucci blasted Priebus for being “a….paranoiac schizophrenic, a paranoiac.” At the same time, Scaramucci criticized Bannon for what he claimed was self-serving behavior.
“I’m not Steve Bannon,” Scaramucci added. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the….strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country.”
Once the interview was made public, Scaramucci quickly went to the twitter sphere to explain his side of things.
“I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter,” Scaramucci twetted on Thursday night. “It won’t happen again.”
The reporter in question, Ryan Lizza, denied that there was any understanding on how the conversation would be transmitted and felt that the comments were important enough for public consumption.
Fortunately for Scaramucci, the controversy didn’t last very long. The same evening the interview was made public, the United States Senate, in a surprise move, delivered a defeat to the White House, blocking passage of a health care bill, one that was planned to lead the way to repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act of 2009.
Scaramucci was appointed communications director on July 21 and there wasn’t a dull moment in his tenure. Scaramucci has been most intent on tracking down “leakers,” those personnel that deliver juicy anonymous quotes to big name media people.
Speaking on the subject during an CNN interview, he claimed that “those are the types of leaks that are so treasonous that 150 years ago, people would have been hung for those types of leaks.”
A veteran also of the 2016 presidential campaign, Scaramucci gave an interview with Anton Media Group in January, after he was appointed to be one of 16 members of Trump’s transition team. Scaramucci said that he saw himself as a coordinator and looks to get a maximum amount of work done with as little theatricality as possible.
“I try to help the most people get the most done with the least drama possible,” said Scaramucci during the interview. “I see myself as a facilitator.”
But he never had the chance to play that role.
