In an interview with the Huffington Post on Tuesday afternoon, ousted White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci indicated that he still feels wronged by Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker reporter who published Scaramucci’s off-the-rails rant about some of his fellow White House staffers.
Scaramucci claimed to have some kind of established relationship with Lizza and thought the reporter knew that the “humorous” interview should be off the record.
“The Lizzas and Scaramuccis have been friends for over 50 years. 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,” Scaramucci told the Huffington Post.
Lizza disputed to the Huffington Post that he knew Scaramucci in any other capacity than as a Trump spokesman.
“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,” Lizza said.
Scaramucci called Lizza last week after the reporter tweeted about a White House dinner attended by Scaramucci and some Fox News personalities. Scaramucci told the Huffington Post Tuesday that he was concerned about the attendees leaking to the press and said he considered it an “attack.” He said he was particularly concerned that the media would reveal that Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle was at the dinner, a fact that was reported later by New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi. There have been rumors of a relationship between Scaramucci and Guilfoyle, which Scaramucci denies. Guilfoyle told the Huffington Post through a spokesperson that she knows Scaramucci through her work at Fox News and that they are “good friends.”
The ousted White House communications director also briefly addressed his firing earlier this week when John Kelly began as chief of staff. He said that Kelly asked him for his resignation.
“It was a very polite conversation,” Scaramucci told the Huffington Post.
He said that he did not speak to the President until later in the day.
“The President told me he knows I have his back, but he has to try to tighten the ship,” Scaramucci told the Huffington Post of his phone conversation with Trump on Monday.
Now that he’s been ousted from his job as communications director, Scaramucci said he is “going to go dark.”
“Then I will reemerge,” he told the Huffington Post. “As me.”
