White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci on Wednesday let off a profanity-laced barn-burner of a rant in which he claimed that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus would shortly be ousted and pledged to “fucking kill all the leakers” in President Donald Trump’s administration.
New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza on Thursday reported that Scaramucci called him the night before to interrogate Lizza about his report that Scaramucci was dining at the White House with Trump and a group of associates and Fox News big-wigs.
Senior White House official tells me that Melania was also at the dinner tonight with Trump, Hannity, Shine, and Scaramucci.
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) July 27, 2017
“Who leaked that to you?” Scaramucci demanded, according to Lizza, and — when Lizza refused to name his sources — threatened to “eliminate everyone in the comms team.”
When Lizza asked Scaramucci why he was so insistent on keeping his dinner plans secret, Scaramucci said he “asked people not to leak things for a period of time,” which he called a “honeymoon period.”
“What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track,” Scaramucci said.
According to Lizza, Scaramucci convinced himself that Priebus had told Lizza of the dinner plans, and then offered a “leak” of his own: “Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.”
Scaramucci appeared to blame Priebus, and imitated him to Lizza: “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 claimed Priebus was jealous of not having been invited to the dinner, and called the chief of staff “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”
Scaramucci also had some choice words for chief White House strategist Steve Bannon as well.
“I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President,” he said, claiming he was not interested in media attention for himself. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock.”
Read the full New Yorker story here.
Lizza on Thursday evening said Scaramucci was “just wrong” in his assumption that Priebus leaked his dinner plans.
“Reince Priebus did not leak that information to me,” Lizza said on CNN.
“This on the record conversation that you had with him on the phone clearly was on the record,” Wolf Blitzer noted. “He didn’t say it was off the record or anything like that.”
“Nothing like that,” Lizza replied. “I actually talked to him this afternoon to make sure that we both understood that that was the case.”
He said Scaramucci was “very worked up” when he called Lizza on Wednesday.
“He was angry,” Lizza said. “He just was getting worked up into a tizzy.”
Ah, another example of how this administration will make America great again.
Seriously, who does he kiss with that mouth? What a disgusting example.
The current White House hires only the best people.
Wow. Well, I at least appreciate that this badministration isn’t even bothering to try to look like they aren’t hiring scumbag lowlifes.
What a fucking pig. He’ll fit right in!
Trump’s absolutely right! His people really do have the best, the biggest, the most classy words I’ve ever seen show up in a TPM headline.
Just, like… wow. LOL.
If you’re not trying to suck your own cock, whose cock are you trying to suck? Oh, wait…I think I know.