A Quick Recap of Anthony Scaramucci’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Anthony Scaramucci’s hiring as communications director caused something of a stir in the White House last week, miffing chief of staff Reince Priebus and leading to the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer.
And then the Mooch waltzed into the briefing room on Friday, doling out his signature schmooze and telling reporters he intended to smooth over relations between an abnormally combative White House and the tenacious press that covers it. As he left the podium following an affectionate round of questions, he blew a kiss to reporters.
But after just seven days on the job, the smooth operator has come to resemble more of a wrecking ball, dumping a vat of kerosene on the fire of disorder that has been raging in the West Wing since the inception of Donald Trump’s presidency.
A recap of the Mooch’s first week:
— The first shot fired in his War on Leakers came on Tuesday morning, when Scaramucci told Politico he planned to fire assistant press secretary Michael Short. That apparently came as news to Short, who resigned before Scaramucci could actually fire him. Scaramucci blamed leakers for the sloppy firing, claiming it upset him “as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.”
… Bless you.
– Then, all hell broke loose on Wednesday night when Scaramucci tweeted what many took as an accusation that Priebus had leaked his financial disclosure information (which, as it turned out, was already public). The Mooch deleted the tweet and denied he had accused Priebus, despite including his Twitter handle in the message.
— Thursday morning, a slightly unhinged Scaramucci called into CNN’s New Day, riffing to Chris Cuomo for 30-minutes about killing leakers. He compared his relationship with Priebus to the biblical feud between Cain and Abel — which ended when Cain bludgeoned Abel to death. As Scaramucci vowed to purge the White House of leakers, an administration official texted Josh Green, who was watching the ordeal from CNN’s greenroom, that the call was a “car crash.”
— And then, on Thursday afternoon, The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza published a bonkers piece detailing his conversation with the furious comms director from Wednesday night. Over the course of the call, the Mooch referred to himself in the third person, demanded Lizza reveal his source, called Priebus a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic,” threatened to fire the entire communications staff, and at one point declared: “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock.”
— Shortly thereafter, Scaramucci took to Twitter to note: “I sometimes use colorful language” and “I will refrain in this arena.” In a subsequent tweet, Scaramucci put an end to his short-lived romance with the press, claiming: “I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter. It won’t happen again.”
This absolutely gobsmacking series of screw-ups led commentators to prepare for the certain demise of Anthony Scaramucci. In a previous White House, just one of those flubs would be enough to send Josh Earnest back to Kansas. But this is no ordinary White House.
Axios reported on Friday morning that Trump “loved” Scaramucci’s shockingly unprofessional comments. What’s more, many have reported the president was actively cheerleading the savaging of Priebus. And given Trump’s intense disdain for leaks, Scaramucci just might be winning him over with his “kill all the leakers” jihad.
For now, it seems Trump is pleased with Scaramucci gradually losing his mind in a war against his own White House, almost like drawing some twisted satisfaction from watching a toddler hurl his plate of SpaghettiOs at the wall. The Mooch may even remind the president of himself. And while straight-edged RNC careerists like Priebus and Spicer have floundered, forever tarred with the administration’s early failures, it could be that a wild and unhinged newcomer like Scaramucci only gets stronger.
[image via screengrab]
—
Follow Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) on Twitter
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
