The Untold Truth Of Anthony Scaramucci

The announcement of Scaramucci's appointment came packaged with the news that Spicer had resigned his roles as press secretary and acting communications director, which he'd been fulfilling since Trump's inauguration. According to The New York Times, Spicer "vehemently disagreed" with hiring Scaramucci, a move that had been in the works for months but was reportedly being held up by White House Chief of Staff, and Spicer ally, Reince Priebus.

Spicer put up a loyal front in public by appearing on Hannity (via HuffPost) and telling viewers that his resignation was designed to give Scaramucci and new Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders a "clean slate to start from."

But, as The Washington Post and others soon noted, Spicer may have been right about The Mooch.

During Scaramucci's first press conference, he was asked if his appointment was an effort to better defend Trump from negative reports in the press about his campaign's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. The Mooch responded by talking about how awesome Trump is at sports. 

"Here's what I'll tell you about the president," he said (via The Washington Post.) "He's the most competitive person I've ever met, OK? I've seen this guy throw a dead spiral through a tire. I've seen him at Madison Square Garden with a topcoat on, he's standing in the key and he's hitting foul shots and swishing them, OK? He sinks three-foot putts. I don't see this guy as a guy that's ever under siege. This is a very, very competitive person."

It was an odd answer. To make things even weirder, Newsweek reported that the official White House transcript changed the length of Trump's putts from 3 feet to 30 feet. As communications director, The Mooch is in charge of official transcripts, and the whole thing simply could have been a typo, but his office refused to respond to inquiries about it. Not a good look. But it wouldn't be the first time Scaramucci allegedly adjusted the public records.

Just two days after his first press briefing, The Mooch appeared on CNN's State of the Union, where he attempted to downplay allegations that Russia meddled with the 2016 election.

"There's a lot of disinformation out there," Scaramucci told host Jake Tapper (via The Hill). "Somebody said to me yesterday—I won't tell you who—that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it, you would have never had any evidence of them."

When Tapper asked who made these claims, The Mooch attempted to make a power move by burning his source. "How about it was the president, Jake? I talked to him yesterday, he called me from Air Force One, and he basically said to me: 'Hey you know, maybe they did it, maybe they didn't do it.'"

This is weird because Scaramucci essentially revealed that he's willing to cite Trump as an "anonymous source" on Russia. That's some sketchy stuff.

Since its beginning, the Trump administration has been plagued by leaks and has taken an aggressive stance on stopping them, with very little luck. Naturally, Scaramucci adopted this stance, and while talking to Politico, The Mooch threatened to "fire everybody" in the White House communications office in order to stop the leaks. Except, while making his threats, Scaramucci accidentally revealed that he planned to remove Assistant Press Directory Michael Short. When Short heard the news, he resigned before he could be canned.

Scaramucci blamed the incident on "leakers," even though the information came from him. "This is the problem with the leaking," he told reporters, according to the New York Post. "This is actually a terrible thing. Let's say I'm firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic." Scaramucci then threatened the entire communications office for a second time, saying that Trump backs him "a thousand percent."

"You're either going to stop leaking or you're going to get fired," The Mooch said (via Politico). "If I got to get this thing down to me and [White House press secretary] Sarah Huckabee [Sanders], then the leaking will stop."

The morning after he accused Priebus on Twitter of being a leak (he deleted the Twitter rant about an hour later), Scaramucci made an unscheduled call into CNN's New Day and kind of walked back his claims about Priebus, but not really.

"When I put out a tweet and I put Reince's name in a tweet, they're all making the assumption that it's him because journalists know who the leakers are," Scaramucci said. "So if Reince wants to explain he's not a leaker, let him do that. But let me tell you about myself. I'm a straight shooter and I'll go right to the heart of the matter." He added. "The President and I would like to tell everybody we have a very, very good idea of who the leakers are, who the senior leakers are in the White House."

And then things went really crazy. "Those are the types of leaks that are so treasonous that 150 years ago, people would have actually been hung for those types of leaks," he said.

For everyone keeping score, this interview happened only six days after Scaramucci took the podium and wowed reporters with his "smooth" delivery. In under a week, the polished communicator was already cracking under the intense pressure of working in Trump's White House. What else could go wrong?

While Scaramucci's foul-mouthed tirade in The New Yorker has convinced some journalists that his time in the White House will be embarrassingly short, Trump reportedly "loved" The Mooch's colorful quotes about Priebus. After Scaramucci appeared on New Day, Fox News reported that Sanders supposedly confirmed that the president actually encouraged the feud because he "enjoys healthy competition and conversation."

It's probably not a surprise that Priebus resigned on the same day as Scaramucci's New Day appearance. A source for Priebus told Politico that "the writing was on the wall" when the president didn't defend the chief of staff.

Scaramucci's so-called victory was short-lived because his personal life became a ticking time-bomb just waiting to explode.

On June 25, 2017, Trump made headlines by turning what should have been a simple speech at the Boy Scouts Jamboree into a controversial political rally, which prompted the Boy Scouts of America to issue an apology. 

What people probably didn't know is that Scaramucci was at that event too. According to Page Six, The Mooch skipped the birth of his second son to be with the president at the jamboree. Four days after the delivery, he'd reportedly not yet met his son.

In Scaramucci's defense, he did send his estranged wife a touching text after the delivery: "Congratulations, I'll pray for our child."

Okay, maybe touching wasn't the right word.

On Aug. 31, 2017, Scaramucci was fired as communications director at the request of Trump's new chief of staff John Kelly, reported The New York Times. The news came exactly one day after Scaramucci's alleged publicist threatened Priebus. The Mooch became the butt of jokes across the country, but the administration did give him some cover by initially making it sound like he resigned on his own.

"Anthony Scaramucci will be leaving his role as White House Communications Director," Sanders told reporters, according to CNN. "Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give chief of staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best."

However, it didn't take long for the leaks that had plagued Scaramucci's short time in office to surface, and soon, reports came in that he was "escorted" from the White House. As the story grew, it became clear that The Mooch had not only been axed, but he had essentially dug his own grave.

Despite Scaramucci's short tenure, he was the catalyst for ousting Priebus, which is something that both Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner had been "diligently pushing for," according to Vanity Fair. Could that be the reason they supported hiring The Mooch?

Once Priebus was gone, Kushner and Ivanka did not come to Scaramucci's aid as the negative press piled up. Vanity Fair reported that the situation grew even colder when the Kushner-Trumps stood dutifully behind the president and backed Kelly's new managerial control over the White House, which he started that morning by firing Scaramucci.

If The Mooch had served his purpose, why keep him around?

In the wake of Scaramucci's firing, the social media jokes started flying, and actress Kate Hudson scored a viral hit with an Instagram post that riffed on her 2003 romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. The hilarious post replaced Hudson and co-star Matthew McConaughey with Trump and Scaramucci, along with the caption "Box office results are in! The #1 comedy in America!" According to Time, the actress' gag racked up more than 90,000 likes in an hour.

Needless to say, the internet had a field day with Scaramucci's downfall. Nobody probably enjoyed the spectacle more than the man who warned against hiring The Mooch in the first place: Spicey.

If there's a silver lining to Scaramucci being fired, it's that the news almost completely overshadowed an embarrassing CNN report about The Mooch falling for an email prankster from the UK who pretended to be Priebus and Russia ambassador John Huntsman. It was another humiliating snafu that highlighted Scaramucci's lack of experience and raised serious concerns about cyber-security in the White House.

In the emails, Scaramucci writes to the prankster, who he thinks is Priebus: "You know what you did. We all do. Even today. But rest assured we were prepared. A Man would apologize." After the prankster responds back with "I can't believe you are questioning my ethics!" Scaramucci gives the fake Priebus some literary advice. "Read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello. You are right there. My family is fine by the way and will thrive. I know what you did. No more replies from me."

Things get worse in Scaramucci's exchanges with the fake Hunstman, when he agrees that both Priebus and Bannon's heads need to roll. Yikes! Fortunately for The Mooch, the emails were published after he was fired and became just another wacky footnote in his short tenure instead of a massive scandal.

Two days after The Mooch was fired from the White House, he was still talking to the media despite promises to "go dark." In an interview with the Huffington Post, Scaramucci tried to spin his infamous profanity-laced rant to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker by claiming the two are old family friends, so his words shouldn't have been printed.

"The Lizzas and Scaramuccis have been friends for over 50 years," The Mooch said. "My dad knew his dad from construction, and we were building a personal relationship. Most of what I said was humorous and joking. Legally, it may have been on the record, but the spirit of it was off. And he knew that."

However, when reached for comment, Lizza denied Scaramucci's version of events. "I've only known Anthony in his capacity as a Trump surrogate and then White House communications director. We are not and have never been 'old family friends,' though I think our fathers knew each other, so maybe that's what he's talking about. (The Long Island Italian world in that generation is relatively small.) But again, that would not be a reason to suppress an explosive on-the-record interview."

In Scaramucci's interview with the Huffington Post, which he gave a day after leaving the White House, he revealed that he still hadn't seen his newborn son whose birth he missed by attending Trump's ill-fated speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia. Scaramucci's admission contradicted earlier statements from his people that claimed he had met his son within a few days of his birth. According to The Mooch, he was planning on meeting his child, but his estranged wife texted him that she needed space. However, his wife's lawyers denied to the Huffington Post that the text in question was about seeing the baby.

In an interesting wrinkle, a few days later, the San Francisco Gate cited Scaramucci's admission that he hadn't met his son, which prompted a PR firm that claims to represent The Mooch to contact the Gate and claim that the Huffington interview is inaccurate because he "saw his newborn son multiple times in July."

Who's telling the truth? With so many conflicting reports, it's hard to say. And it doesn't help that Scaramucci reportedly has a penchant for contradicting himself.

Barely four days after being fired from the White House, Scaramucci showed signs that he had sense of a humor about his comedically short stint, First, he tweeted an editorial cartoon "mocking the Trump administration's revolving door of ouster staff members," according to New York Daily News, which is pretty significant given The Mooch's outspoken dedication to Trump.

Scaramucci then tweeted a video of Mario Cantone's now internet-famous impersonation of The Mooch on Comedy Central's The President Show. The video showed Cantone's Mooch getting a goodbye kiss from Trump after being fired, which again, is a huge departure from Scaramucci's previous love for all things Trump.

Scaramucci's newfound appreciation for White House parodies is also interesting considering he's reportedly trying to break into Hollywood with a project based on a Trump campaign slogan.

While Scaramucci's short tenure as White House Communications Director probably won't go down in history books (at least, not in a good way), there's no denying he approached the job with genuine zeal. His confidence behind the podium could have been a huge asset to the administration, but those same personality traits put The Mooch in a position he didn't want to be in: taking the limelight away from Trump.

The good news for Scaramucci is that the White House he left behind is never short on scandals. Within hours of being fired, The Mooch's departure was already being overshadowed by reports that Trump had "weighed in" on his son's misleading statement about a questionable meeting with a Russian attorney to obtain information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

With Scaramucci quickly vanishing from the headlines, that should give him plenty of space to focus on the new goal he shared with TMZ: "Working on being the best person I can be."

As long as it involves still blowing air kisses, we'll be watching to see what the new and improved Mooch does next.