Newly minted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci on Sunday said President Donald Trump’s administration needs to work on its messaging.
“There’s obviously a communications problem,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Scaramucci said he would support the return of on-camera White House briefings, but said it was ultimately up to Trump.
“I think we should put the cameras on,” he said. “But if the President doesn’t want the cameras on, guess what. We’re not going to have the cameras on. It’s going to really be up to him. But I think we should put the cameras on.”
Scaramucci says he thinks briefings should be televised but it's ultimately up to Trump https://t.co/SawOB2mBuM
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) July 23, 2017
Scaramucci said Trump “is an experienced business person” and a “very effective politician.”
“I just think we need to deliver the messaging a little bit differently than we’ve been doing it in the past,” he said.
Scaramucci’s hiring reportedly prompted the resignation on Friday of former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who disagreed with Scaramucci’s appointment.
By midday Sunday, Scaramucci had outed Trump as an anonymous source who called him questioning whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election at all (“I won’t tell you who,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” and followed up moments later with, “How about it was the President”).
He and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, promoted after Spicer’s resignation, also appeared to be on different pages about whether Trump supports legislation imposing tough new sanctions on Russia.
“We support where the legislation is now,” Sanders said on Sunday.
Scaramucci, on the other hand, offered, “He hasn’t made the decision yet to sign that bill.”