Six Months Into Anthony Scaramucci's 15 Minutes Of Fame, And He's Still Moochin' It Up

By Tori Preston | Politics | February 2, 2018 |

By Tori Preston | Politics | February 2, 2018 |

When I first saw that Anthony Scaramucci had given a new interview, a number of thoughts went through my head. “Him again?” followed by, in no particular order: “What’s he want now?” and “Can’t he just go away already?” and “Oooh, maybe this’ll be sorta fun” and of course, the thought I always have when I think of Scaramucci, “Cocaine is a helluva drug.” For those of you who have perhaps blocked the Mooch from your memory, he’s an Entourage apologist and Trump’s former communications director, who served a laughable 10 days in the job and essentially engineered his own downfall when he decided to call a reporter at The New Yorker and have a crazypants off-the-record heart to heart… without actually confirming the conversation would be kept off the record. Naturally, he was taped and the outlet ran the story.

Whomp whomp.

Anywhoodle, the Mooch has taken that failure and turned it into a sustained campaign to prove he’s Still Super Into President Trump, You Guys, Seriously (And If You’re Listening, Donald, He’d Come Work For You Again In A Heartbeat). Here we are, about 6 months after his dismissal, and he’s just given an epic interview with Vanity Fair, providing a complete blow-by-blow account of his time in Washington, as only the Mooch can. And by that I mean… it’s bonkers. A top to bottom, 360 degree panoramic view of Desperationville. To be fair, we could have had a whole book of the Mooch talking about Moochin’ Around D.C. but, well, publishers just don’t know what the world really wants, I guess.

I seriously recommend reading the full thing in all of its glory, but in the meantime I’m just gonna randomly grab some choice quotes from the article and present them out of context. Scaramucci definitely hasn’t lost his way with words… or with piling on metaphors!

“I want you to imagine the worst person that you’ve met on Wall Street, the most ruthless and the most diabolical,” he told me. “That’s the best person in Washington. That’s the Eagle Scout of Washington.”

“Rancid Penis”—the Mooch’s name for Reince Priebus, then Trump’s chief of staff

“That’s what they do to you, they say, ‘golly gee’ to your face and they act like Richie Cunningham to your face. They’re Richie Cunningham and they’re Opie from The Andy Griffith Show, but they’re the fucking Sith Lord behind your back. They’re hitting you with a lightsaber behind your back.”

“But Bannon turns on me, because Bannon is ultimately railing against the swamp, but he’s actually a cock of the swamp. He’s the creature from the Black Lagoon, Bannon. He acts more swamp-like than any person that’s ever become a Washingtonian. So for all of his railing on the swamp, he is literally the pig in George Orwell’s Animal Farm that stands on his two legs the minute he gets power. He is the creature from the Black Lagoon.”

“Remember, I’m not intimidated by Trump. I have a relationship with him. I said that to him once in the Oval: ‘By the way, how do you want me to talk to you? Do you want me to talk to you like you’re the president of the United States, the way these other people talk to you, or do you want me to talk to you the way I was talking to you on the campaign, or when we were friends? Tell me which way you want to go here. Obviously, when they’re around I’ll say ‘Mr. President’ and all the sycophantic stuff, but when we’re alone, how do you want me to talk to you?’ [Replied Trump:] ‘You’ve got to talk to me like we’re friends.’”

“The phone is ringing and Steve says, ‘How are you?’ ‘How am I? What do you mean how am I?’ He says, ‘Hey, you want to know something? You want to know what your chances are to become the comms director this morning here at the White House? You want to know what your chances are?’ I said, ‘What are my chances, Stephen?’ [Replied Bannon]: ‘Zero! You got that, man? Zero. You got it? Zero.’ I said, ‘Zero, O.K., I didn’t realize that the word ‘president’ was in front of your last name, Stephen, because if it was, if ‘president’ was in front of your last name, my chances would be less than zero.’ I said, ‘But the guy who has ‘president’ in front of his last name, I kind of have 100 percent.

“I have a 30-minute meeting with Reince and Bannon. And Priebus is now, he’s pulling the Howdy Doody, Richie Cunningham delivery and ‘Oh golly gee shucks, we’re friends.’ I’m like, ‘Reince, we can spare the ceremony. I know that you dislike me. I now dislike you. You can spare the ceremony.’ I said, ‘I’m looking at the two of you jamokes. If my network took a shit it would be the combination of the two of you. I’m very, very frustrated with the two of you, I’m going to tell you right now.’”

‘Listen, I don’t want a briefing, all that’ll do is confuse me. Let me go up there and let me talk to these people the way I’m capable of and we’ll see what happens. Thank you, guys, class dismissed. Let’s go.’

Scaramucci thought his first press conference went well. “I’m Italian,” he said. “I like using the word ‘love’”—he used it six times about Trump in that first press conference—“people got upset about that, right? I’m a grown man. I love the president. I say the words. I love everybody. You know what I mean? What do you want me to do? That’s my personality. O.K. I’m aware of my flaws. I write about them pretty honestly in these books I’ve written, right?”

“Of course I used the f-bomb a few times. I’m prone to do that … And I’m making some jokes and I’m playing for laughs, because that’s my personality.

“Do I think I’m being recorded?” he continued. “I do not. That’s my mistake. Do I think the conversation was off the record? A hundred percent I do. Do I say that it’s off the record? I don’t, but I feel that I have a personal rapport with a human being, and inside the spirit of human relations, journalists and their sources know what’s on and off the record …”

“Kelly’s first act is he calls me into his office and says, ‘I need to let you go.’”

“Wow,” the Mooch told him. “That’s super disappointing.”

“You know you made a huge mistake last week and these words that you used, which they recorded and got you on tape, you’ll never recover from that,” Kelly replied. “I know this town. I’ve lived in this town a long time, and you’ll never recover from it.”

Scaramucci wasn’t so sure. “I think this town is a lot different today,” he said. “The president recovered from remarks.”

“You want to talk about the education of Anthony Scaramucci? I learned that the swamp is probably a gold-plated cesspool with no drain. You understand what I’m saying? You can’t drain the fucking thing. It’s a gold-plated cesspool, and you got cesspool operators in there that know how to slow down disruptors like Donald Trump.”

He said that one Trump tweet more than any other sums up the man: “My button is bigger than your button.” He said, “If you really know the guy and you know how he’s raking it over everybody and breaking everybody’s balls, it’s like laugh-out-loud funny.”

Cocaine is a helluva drug, amirite?