White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said he would “refrain” from using foul language after the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza published a detailed account of a phone call laced with profanity.
“I sometimes use colorful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for [Donald Trump’s] agenda,” Scaramucci wrote on Twitter after the story was published.
Scaramucci did not dispute the reported call, in which he described White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus as a “fu**ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” who tried to “c**kblock” him from the White House. He added that he was not seeking the media spotlight, like White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, whom he implied was “trying to suck [his] own c**k.”
Scaramucci has only been in his White House job for six days, but his fame has skyrocketed into the media spotlight.
During his first press conference on Friday, Scaramucci was more flattering to Priebus, saying he was “a dear friend,” that they were like “brothers,” and that he also had a “huge, enormous amount of respect” for Bannon.
“I want to keep my head in the game, I want to keep my ego low,” Scaramucci said.
But Scaramucci quickly became combative in his efforts to defend the president, and was frustrated by the culture in Washington D.C.
“What I don’t like about Washington is people do not let you know how they feel. They’re very nice to your face and then they take a shiv or a machete and they stab it in your back,” he said on Wednesday during a Fox and Friends interview.
“I don’t like it,” He continued. “I’m a Wall Street guy and I’m more of a front-stabbing person, and I would rather people tell directly how I feel about them than this sort of nonsense.”
The newly anointed Trump spokesman also made an aggressive push to stop the leaks from the White House that were embarrassing the president.
“Leaking is atrocious, it’s outrageous, it’s unpatriotic, it damages the president personally, it damages the institution of the presidency, and I don’t like it,” he told White House reporters on Tuesday morning.
By Thursday, Scaramucci was furious at recent leaks surrounding his activity at the White House and immediate reporting about his financial disclosure form.
“It’s absolutely completely and totally reprehensible,” he said in an interview on CNN’s New Day. “As you know from the Italian expression, the fish stinks from the head down, I can tell you two fish that don’t stink, that’s me and the president.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tried to diffuse the media circus surrounding Priebus and Scaramucci, speaking about the controversy on Fox News.
“This is a guy who sometimes uses colorful – and in many circles, probably not appropriate – language. And he’s very passionate about the president, the president’s agenda, and I think he may have let that get the best of him in that conversation,” she said.
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