Incoming White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci made his debut last week at a press conference. Hired over the objections of chief of staff Reince Preibus, chief advisor Steve Bannon and, now former press secreatry Sean “Spicey” Spicer who felt Scaramucci did not have the qualifications for the job, Scaramucci immediately proved them right. The moment he opened his mouth announcing that he calls himself “Mooch.” It became quickly obvious he wasn’t hired to be polite. He immediately took a combative stance, not only with the press, but with his own staff. He made no bones that if the internal leaking did not stop, he’d fire everyone. He then proceeded to leak to the press that he was firing one staff member, Martin Short, but hadn’t told Short. Oops. Then during another interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, he outed Trump as his anonymous source of his misinformation about the Russian meddling in the 2016 election. so much for stopping the leaks. That was only after four days and he wasn’t even officially in the office yet.
It was clear by then that “Mooch the Mouth” as going be more than entertaining which would be amusing if his job weren’t so important. “Mooch” then proceeded to announce, via Twitter, that he was deleting many of his past derogatory tweets about his new employer, in a move for “full transparency.” Someone forgot to tell him the definition of “transparency,” also about archives and screen shots. On Monday, during a cameras on press conference, he expressed his “love” for Trump 14 times, sounding very much like Joe Pesci in a bad mob movie. I promised my erstwhile blog partner that I’d mention Pesci.
When his financial information from his disclosure form was published by the Washington Post, “Mooch” threatened to call in the FBI, a violation of the relationship with the agency, and blamed Priebus challenging him to “prove he wasn’t the leaker.” So far, Priebus hasn’t responded. The disclosure forms, by the way, are public information, which is what “disclosure” means. Someone get this guy a dictionary. Did I tell you that he has a law degree from Harvard?
The pièce de résistance came Wednesday night when he called to ask The New Yorker‘s Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza about a tweet earlier in the evening by Lizza that revealed the “Mooch” and a few others has dinner at the White House. He asked Lizza who was it that leaked that information. When Lizza declined to reveal his source, “Mooch’ launched into a profanity laced tirade with some colorful, to say the least, metaphors. Lizza, being the good reporter he is, wrote a NSFW column about the outrageous conversation, leaving little to the imagination. That set “Mooch” off the rails who tweeted that he had made a mistake trusting a reporter and would not do that again. The problem with that is Mooch forgot to tell Lizza that his red in the face, blue rant was “off the record,” a rookie mistake. Esquire Politics columnist Charlie Pierce expressed his disgust with “Mooch”‘s ducking blame to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes:
“What are you, five?” he said. “You call up a reporter and you unburden yourself and you don’t tell him it’s off the record and you don’t think the guy’s going to print it? My lord, I mean, come on, here.”
The late night hosts also took their “shots” at “Mooch the Mouth,” the best, though was Stephen Colbert.
And Trump made this dim wit his communications director.