A little more than a week ago, former wall street man, Anthony Scaramucci, was named Director of Communications for President Trump’s White House. The President’s entrusting Scaramucci with crafting the message of the White House, even led Press Secretary Sean Spicer to resign. Scaramucci’s first week in the position was troubled, as a CNN interview went awry, and the new White House Communications director eventually, aimed a profanity laced tirade at New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza.
As President Trump’s last several weeks have been mired by detrimental headlines, as there has been dysfunction surrounding both the White house, and the president’s cabinet. Even more changes to his senior staff have occurred, as the President has pushed out Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, after what has been called a rocky tenure at the position, according to The New York Times.
The newest shakeup comes just after Mr. Priebus, was one of the staffers singled out during Mr. Scaramucci’s obscene rant. During the conversation with Lizza, Scaramucci said of Priebus “Reince is a ****ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac…’Let me leak the ****ing thing and see if I can ****-block these people the way I ****-blocked Scaramucci for six months.”
The irony of being the man behind the president’s message while simultaneously telling a reporter that the Chief of Staff to the president is a “paranoid schizophrenic” notwithstanding, Scaramucci took to twitter, a page from his boss’ playbook, to defend his rant, stating “I sometimes use colorful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @realDonaldTrump’s agenda. #MAGA”
Use colorful language he did, as not only was Mr. Priebus a target of the rant, but so was Steve Bannon, Chief White House Strategist. According to a CNN report, this is not the first sign of tension between the Trump staffers, as Bannon stated that Scaramucci would have the communications director post, “over his dead body.” One week later, Bannon still breathes, and Scaramucci crafts the message of the executive branch. Scaramucci later would single out Bannon as he unloaded on Lizza, stating “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own ****” as a way to illustrate that he does not crave media attention the way some members of Trump’s inner sanctum do.
According to the original New Yorker report, Mr. Scaramucci pressed Mr. Lizza whom on the President’s staff, leaked information to Mr. Lizza. Mr. Lizza refused to reveal such information and Mr. Scaramucci threatened him by saying that vhe would fire everyone on the communications staff. “They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “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.”
What is more troubling than the reckless nature of Mr. Scaramucci’s words, or their coarse nature, is the fact that the White House Communications Director, seemingly doesn’t know when he’s on the record with a reporter, or possibly worse, that he wanted his inner thoughts about his colleagues, and the president’s staffers to be on the public record.