Anthony Scaramucci. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Anthony Scaramucci Era Will Be Freakish, Embarrassing and All Too Short
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
29 July 17
Glad-handing hedge-funder turned White House press chief has reignited the
comic potential of Trump presidency. It's too bad he won't last past the end
of this sentence
already miss Anthony Scaramucci. Of course, he hasn't officially been fired
yet (checks Twitter), or committed suicide by jumping into boiling steak fat
at his Gotti-esque Hunt and Fish Club restaurant in Manhattan (checks
Twitter again). But it sure seems like he's not long for this earth. Even by
Trumpian standards, has any federal official had a more disastrous rollout?
The big headline this morning is that the new White House Communications
Director got upset and decided to call Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker and go
full-on Glengarry Glen Ross without asking for background or off-the-record
privileges.
In the call, Scaramucci hounded Lizza to give up his sources, threatened to
fire the entire White House communications staff, and gave what Saddam
Hussein would have described as the mother of all quotes in an effort to
bash fellow backstabbing Trump insider Steve Bannon:
"I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock," he said. "I'm
not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President."
Bannon declined to comment on Scaramucci's charge that he sucks his own
cock.
It's hard to believe that it was barely a week ago, on July 21st, that
Scaramucci was given Trump's top press job. It feels like it was millions of
years in the past, back when Africa was still connected to Brazil, and Sean
Spicer was still our idea of a national embarrassment. This is the way time
works in the Trump era. Days seem like centuries, and weeks seem like
millennia.
In that short period of time, Scaramucci has already accomplished a lot:
.He began by announcing cheerfully that he wanted a "fresh start" with the
media, pledged an "era of new good feeling," and promised to "create a
positive mojo." As he was doing this, the press was seizing on the fact that
he was deleting old tweets that supported gun control, called climate
science "irrefutable," and described Trump as an "odd guy. smart with no
judgment." One tweet even committed ultimate Trump-heresy by saying of
Hillary Clinton, "She is incredibly competent." Even if the media had wanted
to give the guy a break, he all but forced them to beat him like a mule
minutes into his appointment.
.While speaking of fellow White House spokesperson and new department
subordinate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, "Mooch" delivered a line that read like
a Mad Men screen test: "Sarah, if you're watching, I loved the hair and
makeup person that we had on Friday." By the next day he was like a man with
a sackful of ants turned over on his head, so many were the news stories
denouncing him as sexist.
.He got caught talking out of school in between TV segments: "In the back of
my mind I have to call on CNN and send a message to [CNN President Jeff]
Zucker that we are back in business." He added that Zucker wasn't "getting a
placement fee," but had "helped me get the job by hitting those guys,"
referring to three CNN reporters who had to resign over a botched report
claiming Scaramucci had inappropriate contact with Russians.
.He appeared to confirm a Washington Post report his boss Donald Trump had
called "fake news." Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow had told ABC that "pardons are
not being discussed and are not on the table," but Scaramucci told Fox News
Sunday that, hell yes, he'd discussed pardons with the chief: "I'm in the
Oval Office with the president last week, we're talking about that," he
said. "He brought that up, he said but he doesn't have to be pardoned
there's nobody around him that has to be pardoned he was just making the
statement about the power of pardon."
In the space of a week, Trump's new press expert demonstrated that he a)
didn't know how to hold off-the-record conversations b) didn't understand
that cameras and microphones keep rolling even when the red light is off and
c) doesn't bother to check the other public statements made by
administration officials before he makes statements of his own. An alien
crashed on earth and given a two-minute tutorial on dealing with reporters
would have done a better job.
On the other hand, it sort of worked! The least successful Trump
administration officials to date have been the ones who have labored in
public to act like real presidential aides. Scaramucci on the other hand is
like Trump himself: ridiculous, ham-brained, unapologetic, disdainful of
Washington pieties, and bursting with reasonless confidence.
Scaramucci has been hovering around the Trump administration for a while,
but until now didn't have a prominent role. The reason for that is
hilarious: he was considered too ridiculous and uncouth for public service
by the other swamp-monster members of the Trump administration.
His hire horrified even hardened mutants like Bannon ("Over my dead body
will you get this job!" Bannon is reported to have yelped, when he heard the
Scaramucci news). Spicer, who for months had effortlessly gulped down Trump
administration lies like a vulture guzzling battery acid, resigned in
protest at Scaramucci's arrival (an "unusual choice of hills to die on" was
the New Yorker's comment).
Priebus, who kept his nerve even as the loathsome Bannon groped his inner
knee in public, reportedly flipped his lid at the news "Mooch" had been
hired.
The conventional explanation for all of this outrage was that Beltway hacks
were revolting against the arrival of a condescending Wall Street operator.
As Scaramucci explained to New York magazine reporter Jessica Pressler in
January:
"And the other thing I have learned about these people in Washington ... is
they have no money. So what happens when they have no fucking money is they
fight about what seat they are in and what the title is. Fucking congressmen
act like that. They are fucking jackasses."
A hilarious and true observation! Mencken himself would have approved of
Scaramucci's take on Washington's jobholder class. Of course, the rest of
that article included Scaramucci laying a Seventies come-on on Pressler at
his garish Hunt and Fish club restaurant:
"How old are you?" he asked. "You look good. No lines on your face. What are
you, a Sagittarius?"
Scaramucci is a hedge funder - a fund-of-funds guy to be exact, who charges
modestly massive fees to funnel your money to other hedge-funders who do the
actual thinking.
He is said to be good at his job, in a field that is mostly about
mesmerizing high net worth individuals with cannon-bursts of shmaltzy
bullshit just long enough to get them to write huge checks. He is a yammerer
and a glad-hander and apparently also a guy who genuinely likes talking to
reporters, or at least he did before he got this job.
He supposedly got the White House post for the most important reason that
exists in the Trump administration: the president likes the way he looks on
TV. This was as opposed to 45's take on Sean Spicer's famously ill-fitting
attire: "Doesn't the guy own a dark suit?"
Making Scaramucci Communications Director because he dresses like the owner
of a Lamborghini dealership fit like a glove with the Trump ethos. After
spending his early presidency stuck with a standard-issue Beltway
prevaricator as his chief public spokesperson (Spicer was just a year
removed from denouncing Trump on behalf of the RNC for his remarks about
John McCain), Trump was getting back to his roots.
The Communications Director job in the Trump administration is a no-win job,
because the real Communications Director is Trump's Twitter feed. The job
that Scaramucci technically occupies is a thankless and redundant position
that involves standing before reporters and reconciling avalanches of
already-circulated lies, contradictions, and insulting/ignorant statements.
Even a genius of the highest order couldn't make this work. Of course, Trump
hasn't had geniuses available to him. The fourth-rate minds he has instead
had in his employ just started raging trash-fires whenever they tried to
logically explain Trump's utterances.
They gave us statements like Kellyanne Conway's "alternative facts," or
Katrina Pierson's bit about how Trump wasn't changing his position on
immigration, but rather "changing the words that he is saying."
An actual smart person given this job wouldn't bother with any of this. He
or she would simply take the podium each day and say, "What can I say? The
president said that shit." Then just no-comment everything but schedules and
staff announcements. Over time, reporters might actually respect the work.
Probably not, but maybe.
Scaramucci represents a third strategy, one that's similar to Trump's own
campaign tactics. That is, don't ever react to the news or attempt to
explain it, but continually stay ahead of it by making new news of your own.
There are thousands of reporters in America, and if Scaramucci has the
stomach for it, he should call a new one every night and just rant his
brains out. It might not save America from being the laughingstock of the
planet - that ship has sailed for us - but at least it will be entertaining.
At this point in our relationship with the Trump administration, we have to
take what little enjoyments we can. And remember, the next press chief could
be Alex Jones.
Long live Mooch (checks Twitter).
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders addresses questions about
rising staff tensions. Watch here.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner