Following his appointment as White House communications director on Friday, Anthony Scaramucci (shown) made the rounds of various Sunday talk shows. He told Fox News that President Trump is “one of the most effective communicators that’s ever been born. And we’re going to make sure that we get that message out directly to the American people.” He added:
I spent the last 18 months supporting him unyieldingly because he’s a great person and he’s going to be a phenomenal — he is a phenomenal — president, and he’s going to be a better president.
However, events that happened previous to Scaramucci’s accolades reveals why even his friends call him “The Mooch.” Scaramucci himself admits, “I’m really not an ideological guy” and instead is much more interested in riding whichever horse has the best chance of winning.
In 2008, Scaramucci was a fundraiser for Barack Obama. In April 2012, while serving as Mitt Romney’s national finance co-chair, he tweeted: “I hope [Hillary Clinton] runs [in 2016], she is incredibly competent.” During the 2016 presidential campaign, Scaramucci first supported Scott Walker in his run for the presidency but then switched to Jeb Bush after Walker withdrew from the race.
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In January 2016, Scaramucci wrote a scathing letter excoriating Donald Trump for his demagoguery which was published by Fox Business:
At the end of the current election cycle, the Republican Party will be forced to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Unbridled demagoguery has driven the GOP to an inflection point from which there is no turning back. If a populist prevails in the primary, as appears increasingly likely, the party faces either devastating defeat in the general election or a new, unrecognizable identity. In either scenario, a large swath of the GOP electorate will be forced to eat crow and reevaluate its affiliation. Call it, if you will, a moral debt restructuring, one caused by the reckless behavior of a man who knows a thing or two about bankruptcy.
In May Scaramucci signed on as a fundraiser for Trump. He switched allegiances as easily as changing his socks, telling the Washington Post: “I am on board and will support and raise money for him. I will do whatever I can to support our Republican nominee.”
Following Trump’s victory, Scaramucci secured a position on his transition team and then was named assistant to the president. The Mooch continued to seek other positions in the administration but met with disappointments. Lack of success did not deter him, however; and in June he was rewarded with the role of senior vice president and chief strategy officer for the U.S. Export-Import Bank. At the same time, he was named as ambassador to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development).
But his big chance came from out of left field. CNN ran a story about an alleged meeting between Scaramucci and a Russian diplomat, ascribing all manner of suspicious under-the-table dealings. The story was false, the three editors responsible for the story were fired, and Scaramucci accepted CNN’s apology. That came at the same time that Trump was seeking, as the New York Times put it (based, the paper said, upon “a dozen people familiar with the situation”), an “upgrade” of his existing staff. When Scaramucci’s appointment was made, Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, quietly exited, claiming that there were now “too many cooks in the kitchen” for Trump’s messaging to be effective.
Scaramucci spent much his time over the weekend responding to questions about his vitriolic attacks on Trump before he joined his campaign. The smooth-talking Long Islander did his best to laugh it off, saying that he has apologized to Trump many times for the nasty things that he said, and blamed himself for being, at the time, “an inexperienced person in the world of politics.” But those aren’t his only skeletons.
After graduating from Harvard with a law degree, Scaramucci worked for Goldman Sachs in the early 1990s, being hired, fired, and then rehired before going on to found his own hedge fund, Skybridge Capital. He’s a member of the globalist World Economic Forum and speaks at its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He is also a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations.
None of this apparently fazes the president who said Friday night: “Anthony is a person I have great respect for. We have accomplished so much, and we are being given credit for so little. The good news is the people get it, even if the media doesn’t.”
It’s no wonder that even Scaramucci’s friends call him “The Mooch.” He is now riding the horse that he long sought to ride for so many years. Even the Wall Street Journal called his appointment “the latest triumph in a career advanced through self-promotion and persistence.”
Photo of Anthony Scaramucci: Jdarsie11
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
