Editors Note: Due to the explosive nature of this interview with a member of the White House Staff, our editorial team made the executive decision to publish this interview in full without redacting any of the vulgar language. As always, we firmly believe that it’s our utmost responsibility to report the news in the context of which it was originally made. If you may be sensitive or triggered by this language or believe it may not be age appropriate for you, we encourage you to stop reading now.
We know that the headline of this post seems like something out of The Onion, but we regret to inform you that it’s not. This is the state of American politics in the age of Trump.
In call with a journalist from the New Yorker late Thursday, President Trump’s new Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci went on a profanity laden rant throwing basically all of his White House colleagues under the bus.
The call came after New Yorker journalist, Ryan Lizza, tweeted citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine.
According to Lizza, Scaramucci opened the call with a question: “Who leaked that to you?” When Lizza told Scaramucci that he could not reveal his sources, Scaramucci responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications team. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” After continuing to press Lizza and getting nowhere, Scaramucci said “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”
“Is it an assistant to the President?” he asked. When Lizza again told him that he wouldn’t divulge his sources, Scaramucci said “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.”
Asked why it was so important to him that the dinner remain a secret, Scaramucci says “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.”
Scaramucci then apparently becomes convinced that the “leaker” is former RNC Chairman and current White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus. “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.” “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,”
Channeling Priebus, Scaramucci says “ ‘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.’ ”
The backstory here is that Scaramucci was a high profile supporter and donor to the Trump campaign team – and after the election, Trump asked Scaramucci to join his administration. But Priebus had successfully blocked Scaramucci’s appointment until late last week when the President offered Scaramucci the White House Comms Director position over fierce objections from Priebus.
Particularly enraged about a report in Politico that included his public financial disclosure form (Download a copy here), Scaramucci said that the “leak” of the form was “a felony.” “I’ve called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice,” he said. In reality though, the form is publicly available to anyone who requests it, 30 days after filing.
“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,”
“They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.” “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
Reiterating that Priebus would resign soon, he said “He didn’t get the hint that I was reporting directly to the President,” “And I said to the President here are the four or five things that he will do to me.”, insinuating that he expected Priebus to launch a campaign against him.
“What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the 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,” “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.” “Well, the felony, they’re gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.” He added, “The lie detector starts—” Politifact calls Scaramucci’s claim that it is a felony to release the financial disclosure ‘False’.
Asked if the President knew everything that he had shared with Lizza, Scaramucci said “Well, he doesn’t know the extent of all that, he knows about some of that, but he’ll know about the rest of it first thing tomorrow morning when I see him.” After which he indicated he needed to go “because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy.”
Minutes later, he tweeted, “In light of the leak of my financial info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45.” With the addition of Priebus’s Twitter handle, he was insinuating that he believed Priebus was leaking information about him. The tweet quickly went viral.
