Scaramucci Gives New Yorker Wild Impromptu Interview

Yesterday, the New Yorker published an article detailing a phone call White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci gave to one of its reporters Ryan Lizza.

The story begins like this: on Wednesday night when Lizza tweeted that Scaramucci was meeting with the President, the First Lady and Fox News' Sean Hannity and Bill Shine for dinner, a tip he had received from a senior official within the Trump administration. Later that evening, Lizza got a surprise phone call from Scaramucci, who pressed him to reveal the source behind the leaked information. And when Lizza refused to give up that information, the conversation escalated in exciting ways.

First, Scaramucci threatened to fire the entire communications staff in an effort to sway Lizza. Then he called upon Lizza's patriotism. “You’re an American citizen," he said. "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.”

Still no dice. This led Scaramucci to begin complaining about Reince Priebus, the White House Chief of Staff. Scaramucci and Priebus have had bad blood ever since Priebus fought to keep Scaramucci out of the White House during the early days of the administration. Now that Scaramucci is in the circle, his sights are set on Priebus. As Lizza refused to give up his source, Scaramucci began to convince himself that Priebus was the source of the leaks and volunteered his thoughts on the matter, which essentially boiled down to, well, firing everyone.

“They’ll all be fired by me. 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.”

He then went on to impersonate Reince Priebus, trying to convey what he suspected to be Priebus’ thought process when he supposedly leaked the information.

“‘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.’”

He also called Priebus a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”

But wait, there’s more. As Scaramucci continued to ramble his way into the next day's headlines, he grew particularly irate over a Politico report that raised questions of conflicts of interest in his role as suggested by his financial disclosure form, another "leak" Scaramucci believed was masterminded by Priebus (the form is publicly available). By this point, the White House communications director had begun speaking of himself in the third person.

“The swamp will not defeat him. 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.”

And finally, Scaramucci reached the climax of his epic rant, on-the-record, when he assured Lizza he was not in the administration for media attention unlike some.

“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”

Once the conversation, which can only be described as "absolutely fucking bananas," hit Twitter, Twitter did what Twitter does best. Auto-fellatio jokes ruled the afternoon as folks reveled in the unbelievable pettiness this administration has shown time and again. "there is no way steve bannon is that flexible tbh" wrote Wired reporter Ashley Feinberg. "Honestly thought I couldn't be shocked anymore," tweeted CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski. Brandon Wardell was basically gifted a chance to revive his Emoji Sheriff at the expense of Bannon.

howdy, im the sheriff of sucking myself off. im gon suck myself off pic.twitter.com/o2nSL6Cp2X

— BRANDON WARDELL (@BRANDONWARDELL) July 27, 2017

As of 11:30 AM EST, no one in the White House has offered relevant commentary to the story. For Scaramucci's part, he did some extremely mild damage control on Twitter, saying he "made a mistake in trusting a reporter."

I sometimes use colorful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @realDonaldTrump's agenda. #MAGA

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 27, 2017

I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter. It won't happen again.

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 28, 2017

Not to be a Monday Morning Quarterback here, but maybe hiring a guy with no communications experience to be your communications director wasn't the best idea? I don't know, I'm just spitballing.