Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired as White House communications director under President Donald Trump after just 11 days in July 2017, has spoken with staunch Never Trump commentator Bill Kristol regarding how Republicans could oust the president from the top of the party’s 2020 ticket, according to a report.
In a series of terse text messages with CNBC, Kristol, confirmed his discussions with the hedge fund manager, writing a simple “Yup” when asked by reporter Brian Schwartz about the plot.
“Have chatted with him, but working with him would be an exaggeration,” Kristol added, before shying away from offering up additional details about his master plan. If the founder of the now-defunct Weekly Standard were to actually go through with plans to block Trump from being the Republican nominee, it would not be the first time. In the summing leading up to the election, Kristol tried to recruit National Review‘s David French to challenge President Trump, though he ultimately conceded he was not rich or “transformational” enough to win.
This time around, Kristol has said he would support Sen. Ben Sasse (D-NE), retired Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), or Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for president, though none of them have launched a primary challenge to President Trump, who enjoys 88 percent of support among Republicans, according to Gallup.
News of Kristol’s communication with Scaramucci comes as the former White House official is in hot demand by cable and digital news network to offer up a sound bite or two trashing his former boss. In July, “The Mooch” called President Trump a “racist” for challenging Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) to flee the country if they persist in their criticisms of the United States. He then appeared last Friday on Real Time with Bill Maher, where he said recent actions by the president were “absolutely indefensible.”
The president hit back at Scaramucci on Twitter the next day, writing: “Anthony Scaramucci, who was quickly terminated (11 days) from a position that he was totally incapable of handling, now seems to do nothing but television as the all time expert on ‘President Trump.’ Like many other so-called television experts, he knows very little about me.”
In response, the fired communications chief tweeted: “Eventually he turns on everyone and soon it will be you and then the entire country.”
Scaramucci told CNN’s New Day in a Monday interview that the president was inciting hate and implied he was in mental decline.
“He goes after individuals as the president of the United States on his Twitter account. Okay? Which incites hate, which incites death threats. I mean, at some point I think the people in my party will have to look at all this stop being anesthetized to it,” said the investor.
“I think that’s pretty obvious from over the weekend. The guy’s actually dissembling a little bit and sounding more and more nonsensical. And, you know, we’re sort of anesthetized to it, and many say just let him act like that. But you’re fracturing the institutions and all of the things that the country stands for,” he added
President Trump dismissed Scaramucci’s repeated, branding him a “nervous, neurotic, wreck.”
“He called so much, and I said, ‘Anthony, I’m sorry, I can’t do that, I can’t take you in,’” he recalled Tuesday at the airport in Morristown, New Jersey. “And I said, ‘You gotta stop all these phone calls, too many calls Anthony.’ And I wouldn’t take his calls and lo and behold now he feels differently.”
On Friday, Scaramucci told Vanity Fair that the president is a “paper tiger” whose likely to drop his re-election bid by spring due to dismal polling numbers.
“He’s gonna drop out of the race because it’s gonna become very clear,” Scaramucci boldly predicted. “Okay, it’ll be March of 2020. He’ll likely drop out by March of 2020. It’s gonna become very clear that it’s impossible for him to win.”
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