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Donald Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, and Reince Priebus: Nasty, Brutish, and Short
“The simplest explanation is a there are a lot of drugs being used.”
Aug 01, 2017
Reince Priebus, Trump's former chief of staff, lasted only six months before he was fired. But the man who bragged about taking down Priebus got a mere ten days as the most profane White House spokesman in the history of the Republic. "The Mooch" only got about forty-eight hours to gloat about "cock-blocking" his rival, before he too bit the dust.
Washington politicos are pumping out high-minded analysis about the clash between "establishment" Republicans, represented by Priebus, and the visigoths who swept into office with Trump.
But the poisonous political atmosphere emanating from the Trump presidency won't clear up any time soon. Don't count on new chief of staff John Kelly--who made his name treating immigrant workers like criminals and deploying thugs in ICE uniforms to terrify Latina grandmothers--to fix the Trump mess.
The chaos goes all the way to the top. And it will undoubtedly continue.
Certainly, the arrival of "the Mooch" and his foul-mouthed rants was a fascinating chapter in the disastrous Trump regime. It caused Washington political analysts to express disbelief, as they have been doing since Trump won his party's nomination, became President, and then continued to be Trump. The Mooch caused them to wonder afresh: What is going on? How can this be happening?
"The simplest explanation is a there are a lot of drugs being used," says former Democratic Party of Wisconsin communication director Graeme Zielinski. "I think there is probably a pile of cocaine and big bottle of scotch back there. There is no coherent pattern."
"The simplest explanation is a there are a lot of drugs being used."
Zielinski, who was pushed out of his job after making impolitic comments comparing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to noted Wisconsin cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, was always popular with reporters. He gave great quotes, he knew a lot, but his impolitic remarks seem positively quaint in the Trump era.
Zielinski also emphasizes the deliberate destruction of civility and civil society by Republicans--not just by the colorful characters, Trump and the Mooch--but also by low-key money man Reince Priebus.
Priebus played a key role in the rise of Wisconsin's "divide and conquer" politics, based on nurturing deep racial antagonisms and making explicit attacks on teachers and other public employees the norm.
"Wisconsin was Trump before Trump," Zielinski notes.
Back in the era of country-club Republican governors Tommy Thompson and Lee Dreyfus, the Wisconsin Republicans did not devote itself to targeting labor unions, slashing public school funding, stirring up racial resentment, or preventing poor people, black people, and students from voting, the way it did after Reince Priebus became state party chair.
Priebus nurtured that style of politics as practiced by divisive governor Scott Walker, and ushered Wisconsin into a new, mean Walker era. When he went on to become chairman of the Republican National Committee, Priebus and his close friend House Speaker Paul Ryan, took "Wisconsin mean" to the national level.
Priebus served as a conduit for the massive influx of cash from the Koch brothers, the rightwing Bradley Foundation, and various far-flung billionaires into statewide elections.
Priebus ushered Wisconsin into a new, mean Walker era. He was, as Zielinski puts it, "one of the early trustees of the post-Citizens United hellscape."
He was, as Zielinski puts it, "one of the early trustees of the post-Citizens United hellscape."
That experience served him well when he moved to the helm of the national Republican Party, where he deployed his wrecking ball in the service of President Trump.
Zielinski remembers when Priebus first bragged about dumping $300,000--a previously outlandish sum--into the race to defeat Wisconsin's Democratic senate majority leader Russ Decker. It was the beginning of the flood-of-cash approach to politics that helped remake the state and the country.
"He killed the whole Democratic bench," Zielinski recalls. "He surgically beheaded every viable Democrat. He is totally cynical and evil. And he is really good at it.
One of Priebus's key qualifications was the role he played in voter suppression in Wisconsin.
The group One Wisconsin Now put out a press release shortly after Trump was elected, pointing out that, while white nationalistTrump advisor Stephen Bannon caused an uproard when he moved into the White House, Trump's selection of Reince Priebus as his chief of staff was also a red flag.
"Throughout his tenure as a top Republican Party insider, Reince Priebus has been intimately involved in despicable efforts to silence the voices of legal voters," One Wisconsin Now research director Jenni Dye commented.
As Republican National Committee chair, Priebus worked to secretly fund the legal defense of Wisconsin's voter ID law. And back in 2010 he was linked to a "voter caging" plot that was used to suppress minority votes in Milwaukee precincts.
In 2008, Priebus headed up a scheme to intimidate minority voters using Republican poll-watchers.
It's not just the crudeness and bigotry of loudmouth-in-chief Donald Trump, or his late, unlamented spokesman Anthony Scaramucci, or scary racist Steve Bannon that is destabilizing the country. The current political moment is the result of a long-term effort by Republican strategists and money men, including Reince Priebus, to destroy the foundations of our democracy for their own short-term gain.
May their careers, like their vision for life in America, be nasty, brutish, and short.
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That's It for 'The Mooch'? Trump Boots Scaramucci From Post
Just 10 days after announcing that Anthony Scaramucci would serve as the new White House communications director, President Donald Trump has decided to dismiss him from the position, the New York Times first reported Monday.
Jul 31, 2017
Just 10 days after announcing that Anthony Scaramucci would serve as the new White House communications director, President Donald Trump has decided to dismiss him from the position, the New York Times first reported Monday.
The new reporting cites "three people close to the decision," and says the decision followed a request from former Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John F. Kelly, Trump's just-sworn in chief of staff who replaced newly-departed Reince Priebus.
Priebus was among the targets of Scaramucci's recent profanity-ridden attacks in an interview with the New Yorker.
Scaramucci said in a tweet following that interview: "I sometimes use colorful language."
CNN also reported on the latest administration shake-up, adding a statement from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: "Anthony Scaramucci will be leaving his role as White House Communications Director. Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give Chief of Staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best."
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West Wing Chaos: Priebus Quits, General Kelly Takes Over as Chief of Staff
"Reince Priebus was the shortest-serving White House chief of staff in American history, edging out Ken Duberstein."
Jul 28, 2017
The White House announced Friday afternoon that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had resigned amid mounting tensions. Some reports indicate that Priebus "privately resigned yesterday," and Reuters was told by an anonymous official that "Trump informed Priebus two weeks ago that he would be replacing him as White House chief of staff."
President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly would take Priebus's place.
The resignation came just a day after a profanity-laced interview with new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci was published in The New Yorker. Scaramucci launched insults at senior Trump advisors as well as Priebus, calling the then-chief of staff a "paranoid schizophrenic" and accusing him of leaking information to the press.
The New York Times summarized the events preceding Priebus's resignation:
In barely half a year on the job, Mr. Priebus never won the full confidence of the president nor was granted the authority to impose a working organizational structure on the West Wing. Always seeming to be on the edge of ouster, Mr. Priebus saw his fate finally sealed a week ago when Mr. Trump hired Mr. Scaramucci, an edgy Wall Street financier, over the chief of staff's objections. Mr. Priebus's ally, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, resigned in protest.
Reporters and commentators reacted to the news of Priebus's resignation Friday afternoon:
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The Mooch, the Donald, and the Goldmanization of Government
Donald Trump's White House seems more like a Quentin Tarantino movie every day. Amid allegations of broken laws and self-dealing at the highest levels, the president has now hired a Communications Director called "The Mooch."
The name brings to mind the famous "Mr. Pink" scene from Reservoir Dogs, where a macho Harvey Keitel resents being given that appellation during a heist and wants to trade names with another crook.
You can almost hear it now: "Why am I The Mooch?"
Jul 28, 2017
Donald Trump's White House seems more like a Quentin Tarantino movie every day. Amid allegations of broken laws and self-dealing at the highest levels, the president has now hired a Communications Director called "The Mooch."
The name brings to mind the famous "Mr. Pink" scene from Reservoir Dogs, where a macho Harvey Keitel resents being given that appellation during a heist and wants to trade names with another crook.
You can almost hear it now: "Why am I The Mooch?"
It's true that most members of Trump's team, including the president himself, could easily trade nicknames with Anthony Scaramucci. They're all moochers. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was tied to a student loan firm and her department's actions directly benefited the family of a senior DeVos aide, who resigned after the conflict of interest came to light.
There are serious questions about Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's financial interest in the administration's investigation of OneWest Bank. And virtually every senior Trump official stands to gain financially by his proposed tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires - an underlying conflict of interest that would let them "mooch" off the poor and middle-class families who would be hurt as a result.
Trump himself is the Moocher-in-Chief, monetizing his presidency to the limits of the law and beyond. He even skimmed from a fundraiser by holding it at a Trump Hotel so the family business could profit from it.
Enter the Mooch
Of course, Anthony Scaramucci would only want to trade away his nickname if he were ashamed of it, but he shows no sign of shame. On the contrary, the brash, self-promoting huckster seems proud of his background as a Goldman Sachs banker turned hedge-fund super salesman.
Scaramucci's firm, SkyBridge Capital, isn't even really a hedge fund. It's more of a hedge fund retailer. Scaramucci closes the deal and then farms the money out to other funds to manage. The firm sponsors a schmoozefest called the SALT Conference every year, where famous speakers talk while everyone in the crowd tries to hustle one another for business. Think of it as TED for greedheads.
Celebrities like like Magic Johnson and Al "Say Hello to My Little Friend" Pacino have put in appearances at SALT. So have famous business people like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and hedge-fund investor John Paulson, an early Trump backer who made billions off of the subprime lending meltdown.
And in our "money talks" political environment, it's not surprising that a number of politicians and officials have also wet their beaks at the Scaramucci trough, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Tim Geithner, and Tony Blair.
Money Talks
It's somehow fitting that a hedge fund investor who does no investing has now become the spokesman for a president who appears to do very little actual governing.
What Scaramucci does very well, however, is promote Scaramucci. You might think that would make the vain showman who occupies the Oval Office jealous, but you'd be wrong. The Mooch's antics make him Trump's ideal Mini-Me. He's another empty-hatted showboater, loudly distracting the audience from the pickpockets moving among them.
But just to be on the safe side, Scaramucci professes his love for the president loudly and frequently.
The Fall Guy
In his first few days on the job, Scaramucci has already shown his ability to dazzle and distract the press, turning attention away from the dirty dealing going on all around them. He has incited a showy feud with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, for example, a headline-grabbing move in which he says that the man he once called a "brother" is really only a brother in the "Cain and Abel" sense.
If you're not biblically inclined, here's a quick reminder: Cain slew Abel.
In a call to CNN that was described as a "meltdown," Scaramucci accused Priebus of "leaking" his financial disclosure forms to the press, a move he had earlier characterized as a "felony."
Those forms are public, by the way, which means they can't be "leaked," and it is not illegal to cite them.
The Heel
"Meltdown"? To this observer, Scaramucci's antics look more like the over-the-top theatrics of the "heel," or designated bad guy, in a wrestling match. (Wrestling impresario Linda McMahon also works in the Trump White House.)
It's true that those financial disclosure forms reveal some serious ethical concerns arising from Scaramucci's failure to divest his SkyBridge holdings before entering government, but a good heel is always willing to take a fall for the sake of the show.
Hewing to bad-guy convention, The Mooch also unleashed a fusillade of vulgar language on The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, attacking Priebus and accusing presidential advisor Steve Bannon of attempting an anatomically impossible act of sexual self-gratification.
In light of that publication's illustrious literary history, Scaramucci's foul talk to its reporter was the journalistic equivalent of passing gas in church.
Scaramucci apparently also leaked a story to the press and then complained about the leak, an in-the-ring pratfall that seems to further reinforce the "heel" theory.
The Goldmanization of Government
It's working. While the press was writing about about The Mooch's theatrics, less attention was being paid to the ongoing Goldmanization of Trump's administration - a trend that poses a serious risk to the American people, and potentially to the global economy.
America's big banks have a stunning record of proven criminality, and Goldman Sachs is up there with the worst of them. Its rap sheet of documented offenses includes securities fraud, investor fraud, insider trading, and subprime loan abuses. Goldman misled its own customers and bet against them.
A former Goldman trader wrote about its "toxic and destructive" culture, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is widely believed to have perjured himself in testimony before Congress. Following his committee's inquiry into banking practices, Sen. Carl Levin concluded that "Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress." The committee recommended that charges be brought against Blankfein, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute.
Trump openly ran against Goldman Sachs, slamming both Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton for past associations with the firm. And yet, Scaramucci is just the latest in a long list of ex-Goldmanites to join the Administration. They include Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury; Steve Bannon, strategic advisor; Gary D. Cohn, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors; and, Dina Powell, Deputy National Security Advisor. Trump also nominated Goldmanite James Donovan to be Assistant Treasury Secretary, but Donovan withdrew his name from consideration after meeting political resistance.
This week Trump said he's thinking about naming Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs, to be chair of the Federal Reserve. "He doesn't know this, but yes he is (under consideration)," Trump said.
The Goldman Agenda
Cohn, like Mnuchin and other senior Trump officials, is singing from the Goldman Sachs hymnal. Lobbying reports compiled by Open Secrets show that Goldman has already spent $1,430,000 on lobbying this year, on subjects that include tax policy and weakening bank regulations.
Cohn is one of six Republican officials and members of Congress tasked with forging a "tax reform" plan, a job that aligns nicely with his former employer's interests. The Republican House voted last week to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new arbitration rule, scheduled to take effect in September, a move that also aligns nicely with Goldman Sachs's interests. So does Treasury Secretary Mnuchin's push to roll back the Dodd-Frank law.
But then, is any of this really a surprise? By turning to Goldman Sachs to staff his administration, Trump has surrendered the nation's economic policy to the Goldman agenda. He is turning the economy over to some of its worst actors, and all signs suggest that he's not done yet.
There are, however, no confirmed reports yet that Trump plans to appoint Mr. Pink to a senior position in his administration.
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This Is the Most Clueless, Incompetent, and Self-Defeating Administration in American History
The continual meltdown of the Trump administration has reached, unbelievably, an even higher pitch over the last few days, with the hiring of financier Anthony Scaramucci as the new White House communications director.
And yet, the endless juicy personal drama surrounding President Trump is in some ways covering up for far worse failures and incompetence -- particularly surrounding America's nuclear programs and arsenal. The hapless incompetence of this administration is virtually impossible to exaggerate.
Jul 28, 2017
The continual meltdown of the Trump administration has reached, unbelievably, an even higher pitch over the last few days, with the hiring of financier Anthony Scaramucci as the new White House communications director.
And yet, the endless juicy personal drama surrounding President Trump is in some ways covering up for far worse failures and incompetence -- particularly surrounding America's nuclear programs and arsenal. The hapless incompetence of this administration is virtually impossible to exaggerate.
But first, the drama. A mere five days after taking the job, Scaramucci was embroiled in a new seething controversy when Politico released a report detailing that, like practically every other top member of the Trump regime, he is stinking rich. He has up to $85 million in assets, plus a $5 million paycheck from his firm SkyBridge Capital and $4.9 million in capital gains from his ownership stake there in just this year alone.
Scaramucci immediately blamed White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who had opposed his hiring, for the felonious "leak," and tweeted that he was going to report him to the FBI. But it turned out the form was public, a result of his previous post at the Export-Import Bank (as could be seen on the title of the form, which reads "Public Financial Disclosure Report"). Nevertheless, Scaramucci continued to insist that an investigation was needed, telling The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza that "Reince is a f--king paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac." (He also noted that "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock.")
All this tomfoolery only slightly displaced the previous, still-ongoing personnel drama: Trump's campaign against Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The president told New York Times reporters he was upset that Sessions recused himself from the investigation into Trump's Russia ties, and is reportedly considering replacing Sessions with a loyal lickspittle who will squash the investigation. (Whether or not someone behaving this way has something to hide on Russia is left as an exercise for the reader.)
When trying to describe this endless parade of buffoonery, incompetence, and criminality, one problem is adequate description. One instinctively reaches for comparisons from fiction, but the problem is that the darkest black comedy satires of government incompetence do not remotely approach the reality we're living through. The scene in In the Loop where an American general is constructing a war plan with a child's toy calculator seems like a portrayal of earnest, responsible professionalism compared with our current cretin-ocracy.
But that isn't the half of it. A much more alarming aspect of the incompetence of the Trump regime can be found in a Vanity Fair story by Michael Lewis, who has been reporting at the Department of Energy for the past few months. The rather obscure agency is tasked with many things, but its primary one is safeguarding America's nuclear stockpile, securing and cleaning up nuclear waste, and securing loose nuclear material around the world. "In just the past eight years the DoE's National Nuclear Security Administration has collected enough material to make 160 nuclear bombs," Lewis writes.
The depth of the intellectual rot in the Republican Party is embodied in the selection of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to run this department. This man's legendary stupidity first became a national punchline during a Republican presidential debate in 2011, when he was attempting to list three Cabinet-level agencies he would abolish, naming the Departments of Commerce and Education but forgetting Energy. After Trump appointed him to run the agency, it turned out that he still had no idea what the department did -- assuming, Texas-style, that it was all about oil and gas. Oops.
But as Lewis writes, Perry is running the department almost alone. In his increasingly terrifying article, Lewis describes the scores of Obama-era bureaucrats who waited patiently after the election for the Trump transition team to send their new people over, so they could describe the complicated but vital programs and finances of the department, as Bush-era people had done for them. (The department has a budget of about $30 billion and employs 110,000 people.) Almost nobody showed up -- and many of those who did were wet-behind-the-ears ideological hacks who demanded to know who was researching climate change. To this day only four out of 22 political appointee positions at Energy even have nominations -- and Perry is the only one that has been confirmed.
Extraordinarily sensitive nuclear, waste cleanup, and energy security programs are being neglected or simply left to rot. Meanwhile, Trump's proposed budget would cut spending on electrical grid security by half, as well as zero out an extraordinarily successful research division, a green loan program that underwrites things like Tesla's new cutting-edge factory, cancel all climate change research, and force layoffs of 6,000 scientists.
Any random schlub who was yanked off the street to become president would almost certainly be convinced of the vital nature of DoE programs by the world-class scientists working there. But Donald Trump has a virtually unique combination of total ignorance, total confidence, and endless trashy scandals to distract from his fundamental incapacity to govern.
This kind of thing could quite easily get thousands and thousands of people killed. There are worse things than national humiliation when being governed by the most corrupt, incompetent president in history.
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Scaramucci: 'Not Trying to Suck My Own Cock...I'm Here To Serve the Country'
Trump's new communications director attacks Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and other top White House aids in profanity-laced, on-the-record rant to journalist
Jul 27, 2017
In a profanity-laced and on-the-record conversation with New Yorker political reporter Ryan Lizza, President Donald Trump's White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci--who took the job less than a week ago--attacked senior White House advisor Steven Bannon, Trump's chief of staff Reince Priebus, and other unnamed officials saying he would "fire all of them" if the journalist did not divulge the person who leaked recent information from the White House.
"I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock... I'm not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I'm here to serve the country." --White House communications director Anthony ScaramucciAnd then, as Lizza reported late Thursday afternoon, "it escalated from there."
The exchange took place in a phone call Wednesday night, which was initiated by Scaramucci, after Lizza post on social media about his knowledge of attendees at a private White House dinner with the president. According to Lizza, Scaramucci wanted to know who tipped him off about the guest list and became increasingly angry when the reporter refused to divulge his source.
From the New Yorker:
"Is it an assistant to the President?" [Scaramucci] asked. I again told him I couldn't say. "O.K., I'm going to fire every one of them, and then you haven't protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks."
I asked him why it was so important for the dinner to be kept a secret. Surely, I said, it would become public at some point. "I've asked people not to leak things for a period of time and give me a honeymoon period," he said. "They won't do it." He was getting more and more worked up, and he eventually convinced himself that Priebus was my source.
"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." The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn't been invited. "Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac," Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: "'Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.'" (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)
Subsequently, Bannon gets mentioned and then Scaramucci lets loose. Explaining to Lizza that he's not interested in the media attention, Scaramucci declared, "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock... I'm not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I'm here to serve the country."
And what, beyond firing them, might he do with all these leakers?
"What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President's agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people," Scaramucci reportedly told Lizza.
Though an audio recording of the call was not mentioned or published, in a tweet Wednesday evening the communications director appeared to confirm the veracity by not questioning the reporting but only admitting that sometimes he uses "colorful language."
Two hours later, he added:
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Scaramucci Goes to War Over "Leak" That Turns Out To Be Public Document
Amid reported infighting, communications director threatens to turn FBI on White House staff
Jul 27, 2017
White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci waged war with President Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, Thursday morning over leaks from the White House to journalists. But Scaramucci's fight against leaks appears to be at least partially focused on public information, and on the perfectly legal transfer of information from officials to the press.
After Politico reported Wednesday evening that Scaramucci could still profit from his former hedge fund while working in the White House, the new communications director tweeted an angry message regarding the website's use of his financial disclosure form.
By law the form had been submitted to the Office of Government Ethics when Scaramucci was hired by the White House, and was therefore public information.
Still, Scaramucci threatened to report the leak of the form to the FBI and the Justice Department, and tagged Priebus in the tweet, leading to speculation that he was implicating the chief of staff in the so-called leak.
Lorraine Woellert, the reporter who wrote the Politico story, explained on her own Twitter account that no one had leaked the form, leading Scaramucci to quickly delete his post.
While Scaramucci denied that he was making an accusation, saying he was simply making it known that senior administration officials were all helping to end leaks, he called in to CNN's "New Day" on Thursday morning to directly challenge Priebus to deny his involvement.
Later on "New Day," Joshua Green of Bloomberg noted that Scaramucci's fight against leakers appears to be having the unintended effect of creating an even closer relationship between journalists and some of their secret sources.
Scaramucci's attempt at cracking down on leaks has so far been focused on the notion that leaks from the White House are inherently illegal, but according to an article posted earlier this year by Politifact, "There isn't a single law that criminalizes all leaks of classified or privileged government information to the media."
Politifact also noted as the president expressed anger about the leaks regarding information about the White House's Russian contacts, that "Trump's public railing against the leaks might be saber-rattling in order to deter future unwanted disclosures."
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Scaramucci Has Anonymous Source Who Told Him Russians "Maybe Didn't" Hack 2016 Election (Okay, He Admits, It Was President Trump)
New communications director is having a great first weekend on the job
Jul 23, 2017
In addition to other headline-generating statements over the weekend (here and here), President Donald Trump's new communications director Anthony Scaramucci also on Sunday claimed he had a source--but said "I won't tell you who"--who communicated to him that maybe it wasn't Russian government officials who meddled in last year's U.S. election.
Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union" and pressed mildly by Jake Tapper about who this "anonymous source" was, Scaramucci quickly confessed, "How 'bout it was the president, Jake. I talked to him yesterday. He called me from Air Force One and he basically said to me: 'Hey you know, maybe they did it, maybe they didn't do it.'"
The bizarre exchange occurs, The Hill notes, "amid uncertainty on whether the president will support a bipartisan Russian sanctions bill, despite White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisting [Sunday] that the Trump administration supports the measure."
And while Huckabee Sanders delivered that message, Scaramucci offered a variation on the president's current position.
The president, he said, "hasn't made the decision yet to sign that bill one way or another."
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Will Trump Let the White House Bring Back Cameras?
If president approves, says Scaramucci, administration should resume regular on-camera briefings
Jul 23, 2017
President Donald Trump's new communications director says he's "personally" in favor of on-camera White House briefings, but ultimately the decision will be up to the president.
On CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday, Wall Street financier-turned-White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci told host Jake Tapper:
If you're asking me for my personal opinion--and maybe the president will be upset for giving my personal--we should put the cameras on. That's no problem. I don't think we need to have the cameras off.
But if the president doesn't want the cameras on, guess what? We're not going to have the cameras on. It's going to really be up to him. But I think we should put the cameras on.
Watch Scaramucci on CNN:
His apparently relaxed attitude toward cameras marks a startling departure from the Trump administration's hostile and increasingly restrictive interactions with the media. In the past six months, the administration has frequently banned television and audio broadcasting of briefings. Scaramucci, who officially joined Trump's communication team Friday, also reminded Tapper that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the newly-appointed press secretary. Scaramucci said he'd given her "the big office" and encouraged her to invite members of the press to her office.
Huckabee Sanders has defended the White House's shift toward more off-camera briefings. During her recent off-camera briefing to address the Don Jr. email scandal, she said: "We're always looking at different approaches and different ways to communicate the president's message and talk about the agenda. This is one of the many ways we choose to do that."
Last month, then-press secretary Sean Spicer said the shift was, in part, because members of the press pool "want to become YouTube stars and ask some snarky question that's been asked eight times," and that the reporters "are more focused about getting their clip on air than they are of actually taking the time to understand an issue."
In May, the president threatened to cancel all press briefings, "and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy." Just a few months earlier, the administration's engagement with reporters was decried as "undemocratic and unacceptable," "chilling" and "totalitarian" when, in February, the White House unexpectedly barred four news outlets from an off-camera briefing with Spicer.
Spicer resigned Friday, reportedly in response to Scaramucci's appointment. Later Friday, the White House held its first on-camera briefing in nearly a month.
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The Lying Will Now Be Smoother and More Telegenic
Jul 22, 2017
There are two things I decline to do about the departure of Sean Spicer from behind his White House podium: 1) Care, and 2) Sympathize.
As to the first, it doesn't matter a damn to the country who the next marquee liar representing Camp Runamuck is. Any TV reporter who starts talking about how the "messaging" will now change under the watchful eye of Anthony Scaramucci is telling you that they think the administration's lying will now be smoother and more telegenic. The president will continue to be an unqualified, undereducated dolt. The policies, such as they are, will continue to be retrograde and cruel. Bob Mueller will shrug and get back to work until El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago fires him. The public face of this particular administration is doomed always to be more of a useless bobo than all the press secretaries who have come before. None of that will change.
(The new guy, Anthony Scaramucci, came out on Friday afternoon and said thatDonald Trump had "some of the best political instincts in the world." Aces, all of them, all the way down.)
As to the second, we're already starting to hear folks talk about what a good guy Spicer is, and how he can get back to being the good guy he always was. The hell with that. Spicer took the Dolt's Shilling. On his first day on the gig, he willingly lied about the size of the inaugural crowd because the president*'s ego couldn't handle its actual size. He then repeated whatever nonsense he was told to repeat until he became a figure of fun and ridicule. And how are we supposed to believe he left because he was dissatisfied with the fact that he has a new supervisor?
"I will lie and degrade the public discourse more than any living human being, but I cannot work with THAT MAN." (Sean Spicer's Last Lament, 2017.)
Yeah, that'll fly.
I still think they should have let him meet the pope, though. That was unkind.
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