WARNING: This story contains graphic language.
Just when you thought Anthony Scaramucci's CNN interview on Thursday morning couldn't possibly be topped, the incoming White House communications director goes and outdoes himself!
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza published a piece Thursday night detailing a phone conversation he had the previous evening with Scaramucci -- a call that came in the wake of Lizza reporting that the communications director was having dinner with President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Fox News host Sean Hannity and former top Fox News executive Bill Shine.
The call, as reported by Lizza, was bananas. Like b-a-n-a-n-a-s.
"I sometimes use colorful language," Scaramucci tweeted in the wake of the story posting. "I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @realDonaldTrump's agenda. #MAGA"
You should read the whole thing yourself. But here are the high/low-lights, ranked by how disastrously bad they are for Scaramucci and the Trump White House.
12. "The lie detector starts..."
Lizza reports that Scaramucci broke off this thought without finishing it -- amid a broader rant about how leakers had broken the law. This quote is like Kwame Brown -- so much upside, unrealized.
11. "OK, the Mooch showed up a week ago. This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, OK."
Nothing truly damaging here but a) the fact that Scaramucci referred to himself in the third person and b) called himself "the Mooch" is truly amazing.
10. "Yeah, let me go, though, because I've gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy."
This was Scaramucci's sign-off with Lizza. As Lizza notes, Scaramucci then sent the tweet about leaking his financial disclosure -- a tweet in which he tagged Priebus. This quote then puts to lie Scaramucci's explanation that he tagged Priebus in the tweet to show it was a united front against the leakers.
9. "I've done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they're going to have to go fuck themselves."
Not sure they're going to "have to" do that. I mean, it's certainly an option. But far from a necessity.
8. "Reince Priebus -- if you want to leak something -- he'll be asked to resign very shortly."
This would be a disastrous quote in any other circumstance. The new communications director telling a reporter that the chief of staff is going to resign! In this interview, it doesn't even come close to cracking the top five.
7. (tie) "What I'm going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we'll start over."
"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."
"They'll all be fired by me. I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I'll fire tomorrow."
To pick a favorite among the "firing trio" is too hard. (It's like picking your favorite Sand Snake.) But, can you imagine Scaramucci showing up for work tomorrow and facing the staff? "Hey everybody, I know I told a reporter that I was going to fire all of you. But, you know, people say stuff, right? Who's with me?"
(crickets)
4. "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."
Any political reporter whose been at it for a while will tell you that attempts to guilt you into not writing something come in all shapes and sizes. But the appeal to patriotism is a new one -- especially when you consider that this isn't about classified intelligence. This is about Scaramucci having dinner with the President, the first lady and Sean Hannity.
3. "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."
Ok. So, here's the plan:
1. We kill everyone who leaked anything.
2. We succeed for the American people.
3. Resign in glory.
2. "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock."
That this bit of insight into the White House chief strategist's flexibility isn't the number one most damaging thing that Scaramucci says is truly remarkable. It's like how James Harden didn't win the MVP because Russell Westbrook averaged a triple double.
It takes only a once-in-a-lifetime effort for this quote to be the runner-up.
1. "Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac...'Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.'"
There's so much here. The bashing of Priebus' state of mind. The imitating of Priebus. The words themselves. This is a hall-of-fame-type quote. And Scaramucci isn't even supposed to start as communications director until August 15!
