President Trump’s new message man is already eating his own words.
President Trump’s new message man is already eating his own words.
In his Sunday talk shows debut, the newly minted White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci continuously contradicted himself — and others in the Trump administration — as he seemed to struggle with keeping several White House stories straight.
In one instance, Scaramucci caved in after one question about a statement he made and revealed his anonymous source in the middle of an interview.
The source turned out to be Trump.
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Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union, ” Scaramucci argued that there’s “a lot of disinformation” circulating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
“Somebody said to me yesterday — I won’ t tell you who — that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it, you would have never had any evidence of them, ” Scaramucci said.
Host Jake Tapper began to ask a question about what “this anonymous person” had claimed.
Scaramucci didn’t wait for him to finish.
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“How about — how about it was the President, Jake?” he said.
“I talked to him yesterday. He called me from Air Force One.”
This came the same day Scaramucci vowed to take “dramatic action” to stop press leaks from anonymous White House sources.
In a “Fox News Sunday” interview, Scaramucci boasted about how he was “in the Oval Office” last week talking to Trump about the presidential powers to grant pardons.
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“He brought that up, ” Scaramucci said.
That negates a narrative that has been running out the White House for several days about how Trump hasn’t shown serious interest in his pardon powers.
Other Trump spokespeople, such as attorney Jay Sekulow, said in their Sunday interviews that Trump has never even raised the issue.
Meanwhile, Scaramucci also had to devote airtime to defending himself.
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The former Wall Street financier, who earned the nickname “The Mooch, ” left behind years of online statements that now contradict many of Trump’s signature platforms.
On his Twitter account, Scaramucci proudly proclaimed his support for abortion, gay marriage, stronger gun control, Islam and Hillary Clinton.
“I hope she runs, she is incredibly competent, ” he wrote in 2012 about Clinton, who would face off with Trump four years later for the presidency.
Since his sudden promotion days ago, Scaramucci found a swift solution to his trail of tweets: He deleted them.
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When pressed about the deleted tweets on CNN, the new communications guy likened himself to Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan.
“Let me tell you one of the things I really hate about Washington: We have this political purity test on policy, ” he said.
“So, if I’m for something and then I’m against something then, all of a sudden I’m a hypocrite. Yet some of the greatest leaders known to mankind — Winston Churchill started out as a liberal, and then he became a conservative. Ronald Reagan started out as a Democrat under FDR, and then he became a conservative. And so some of the smartest minds and some of the smartest political leaders have changed and evolved and adapted their opinions.”
Still, Scaramucci straight out denied one part of his past: An essay he penned in 2016 condemning “unbridled demagoguery” in the Republican Party.
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The Fox Business op-ed, uncovered by CNN, took aim at a “populist” and “reckless” candidate who “knows a thing or two about bankruptcy.”
The piece never explicitly named Trump — so Scaramucci now claims he wasn’ t talking about his new boss.
“Where does it say in that article that Donald Trump is a demagogue?” he asked on CNN.
Scaramucci, who has no previous political experience, joined Trump’s team last week when former press secretary Sean Spicer suddenly got pushed out.
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Politico reported that Spicer was stunned by his sudden ouster, after he loyally served Trump for months and was preparing to take a larger role behind the scenes. It was only the latest rushed exit in an administration that has seen steady turnover in only six months.
Scaramucci said he was going to usher in “an era of new good feeling” in the White House press corps.
“Let’s see if we can reset this and create a more positive mojo among everybody, ” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
His « positive mojo » seemed to already be flowing Sunday.
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After finishing his heated CNN interview — which ran for more than 20 minutes, punctuated by regular flareups— Scaramucci signed off with a shoutout to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The only thing I ask Sarah: Sarah, if you’re watching, I loved the hair and makeup person that we had on Friday, ” Scaramucci said.
“So, I would like to continue to use the hair and makeup person.”
