Beleaguered former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci went on CNN Tuesday morning to defend the President and his latest controversy: referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as “Pocahontas” during a ceremony honoring Native American code talkers.
Claiming he’s not a President Donald Trump “loyalist,” Scaramucci said his “objective” take was that the remark wasn’t meant to be demeaning.
“That’s the President’s style,” he said.
“It’s a little shock jockey and listen, I think it’s the style that got him elected,” Scaramucci said in a relatively lukewarm interview on CNN’s “New Day” with Chris Cuomo. “I don’t think he would be in the Oval Office if he didn’t have that style. I think people voted for him because he’s expressed a level of the discontent about the current order of operations inside of Washington and I think he used that kind of style and that kind of delivery system to do that.”
When asked what the President’s style has to do with using what some have called a racial slur to criticize a sitting senator in front of the Native American war veterans who used the Navajo language as a form of coded message during World War II, Scaramucci attempted to create solidarity with Cuomo over their shared Italian heritage.
“Listen you’ve been victims of racial slurring because of your ethnic heritage, so have I. What do you do in a situation like that? I tell you what I do,” he said as he theatrically brushed fake insults off his shoulder. “And that’s what you do, you have to do that.”
Scaramucci said he thinks people are getting a little too “micromanaging” about “each other’s languages and the whole political correctness movement.”
“I think most people in general are tired of that,” he said. “You are, I am, and maybe you are not, I don’t know, you work at CNN. But I am a little tired of it.”
Thanking Scaramucci for his “cheap shot,” Cuomo called Scaramucci a hypocrite, saying that conservatives would be outraged if a Democratic president had said or done the same thing.
“I have heard so many things from the other side and one of the funniest things from my 11 days inside the White House was somebody sent me a clip from late night comedians and I mean you want to talk about cheap shots, and low ball shots, most of them were ethnic slurs and most of them were racially charged attacks on me,” he said.
“They’re comedians, they’re jokers, not the President of the United States,” Cuomo shot back.
“I understand all that, but my point is, I don’t see it as such a big deal as perhaps you do,” Scaramucci said.
Anthony Scaramucci defends Trump's "Pocahontas" jab at Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "She's been nasty to him and he's been concurrently nasty to her" https://t.co/nd2TDpKAKQ
— New Day (@NewDay) November 28, 2017
