| On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.
“Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.” In Scaramucci’s view, the fact that word of the dinner had reached a reporter was evidence that his rivals in the West Wing, particularly Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, were plotting against him. While they have publicly maintained that there is no bad blood between them, Scaramucci and Priebus have been feuding for months. After the election, Trump asked Scaramucci to join his Administration, and Scaramucci sold his company, SkyBridge Capital, in anticipation of taking on a senior role. But Priebus didn’t want him in the White House, and successfully blocked him for being appointed to a job until last week, when Trump offered him the communications job over Priebus’s vehement objections. In response to Scaramucci’s appointment, Sean Spicer, an ally of Priebus’s, resigned his position as press secretary. And in an additional slight to Priebus, the White House’s official announcement of Scaramucci’s hiring noted that he would report directly to the President, rather than to the chief of staff. Scaramucci’s first public appearance as communications director was a slick and conciliatory performance at the lectern in the White House briefing room last Friday. He suggested it was time for the White House to turn a page. But since then, he has become obsessed with leaks and threatened to fire staffers if he discovers that they have given unauthorized information to reporters. Michael Short, a White House press aide considered close to Priebus, resigned on Tuesday after Scaramucci publicly spoke about firing him. Meanwhile, several damaging stories about Scaramucci have appeared in the press, and he blamed Priebus for most of them. Now, he wanted to know whom I had been talking to about his dinner with the President. Scaramucci, who initiated the call, did not ask for the conversation to be off the record or on background. “Is it an assistant to the President?” he asked. I again told him I couldn’t say. “O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them, and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.” I asked him why it was so important for the dinner to be kept a secret. Surely, I said, it would become public at some point. “I’ve asked people not to leak things for a period of time and give me a honeymoon period,” he said. “They won’t do it.” He was getting more and more worked up, and he eventually convinced himself that Priebus was my source. “They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.) Scaramucci was particularly incensed by a Politico report about his financial-disclosure form, which he viewed as an illegal act of retaliation by Priebus. The reporter said Thursday morning that the document was publicly available and she had obtained it from the Export-Import Bank. Scaramucci didn’t know this at the time, and he insisted to me that Priebus had leaked the document, and that the act was “a felony.” “I’ve called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice,” he told me. “Are you serious?” I asked. “The swamp will not defeat him,” he said, breaking into the third person. “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.” Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.) He reiterated that Priebus would resign soon, and he noted that he told Trump that he expected Priebus to launch a campaign against him. “He didn’t get the hint that I was reporting directly to the President,” he said. “And I said to the President here are the four or five things that he will do to me.” His list of allegations included leaking the Hannity dinner and the details from his financial-disclosure form. I got the sense that Scaramucci’s campaign against leakers flows from his intense loyalty to Trump. Unlike other Trump advisers, I’ve never heard him say a bad word about the President. “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 so we can succeed for the American people,” he told me. He cryptically suggested that he had more information about White House aides. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.” “What?” I interjected. “Well, the felony, they’re gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.” He added, “The lie detector starts—” but then he changed the subject and returned to what he thought was the illegal leak of his financial-disclosure forms. I asked if the President knew all of this. “Well, he doesn’t know the extent of all that, he knows about some of that, but he’ll know about the rest of it first thing tomorrow morning when I see him.” Scaramucci said he had to get going. “Yeah, let me go, though, because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy.” Minutes later, he tweeted, “In light of the leak of my financial info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45.” With the addition of Priebus’s Twitter handle, he was making public what he had just told me: that he believed Priebus was leaking information about him. The tweet quickly went viral. Scaramucci seemed to have second thoughts. Within two hours he deleted the original tweet and posted a new one denying that he was targeting the chief of staff. “Wrong!” he said, adding a screenshot of an Axios article that said, “Scaramucci appears to want Priebus investigated by FBI.” Scaramucci continued, “Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks. @Reince45.” A few hours later, I appeared on CNN to discuss the overnight drama. As I was talking about Scaramucci, he called into the show himself and referenced our conversation. He changed his story about Priebus. Instead of saying that he was trying to expose Priebus as a leaker, he said that the reason he mentioned Priebus in his deleted tweet was because he wanted to work together with Priebus to discover the leakers. “He’s the chief of staff, he’s responsible for understanding and uncovering and helping me do that inside the White House, which is why I put that tweet out last night,” Scaramucci said, after noting that he had talked to me Wednesday night. He then made an argument that journalists were assuming that he was accusing Priebus because they know Priebus leaks to the press. “When I put out a tweet, and I put Reince’s name in the tweet,” he said, “they’re all making the assumption that it’s him because journalists know who the leakers are. So, if Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that.” Scaramucci then made a plea to viewers. “Let me tell you something about myself,” he said. “I am a straight shooter.” |
Poster Comment:
Not only did Mooch not go off the record when he called the New Yorker (of all news rags to call) but Lizza recorded him saying all this stuff so he can prove it by releasing it any time.
#1: interpreter To: Tooconservative (#0)
Barry M
interpreter posted on 2017-07-28 10:39:55 Reply Private Reply
#2: Tooconservative To: interpreter (#1)
Mooch called up to try to get the reporter to leak his source or at least to confirm it was someone who was a presidential advisor (had to be Bannon since Priebus is officially chief of staff).
When Lizza refused to give any confirmation, Mooch went insane ranting about dicks and made a total fool of himself on the record, knowing it was all on the record (which is another thing he's lying about now but which Lizza has recordings of him saying that it was all on the record from the beginning).
Amateur hour. Maybe this kind of thing works in the hedge fund world or in NYC real estate but it doesn't work against enemy press outlets in D.C.
Mooch still hasn't succeeded in selling his own company to the Chinese so he has probably actually driven down its value as a result of this. Anyway, some Wall Street financial writers are saying this.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-28 12:18:35 Reply Private Reply
#3: interpreter To: Tooconservative (#2)
interpreter posted on 2017-07-28 13:23:08 Reply Private Reply
#4: nolu chan To: Tooconservative, interpreter (#2)
Or the administration just wanted to own the news cycle and it was a sterling success.
nolu chan posted on 2017-07-28 15:04:35 Reply Private Reply
#5: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#0)
Why not? It's not the nuclear codes, for Christ's sake.
misterwhite posted on 2017-07-28 15:07:43 Reply Private Reply
#6: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#5)
Mooch made himself look like a total dumbass, calling up a hostile press outlet and appealing to a Lefty reporter's patriotism to reveal his confidential source. How much of a rube is Mooch anyway?
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-28 16:04:36 Reply Private Reply
#7: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#6)
Regarding a dinner at the White House. Why the cloak and dagger? Reveal the source. This is getting ridiculous and it's not because of Mooch.
misterwhite posted on 2017-07-28 17:34:25 Reply Private Reply
#8: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#7)
WH visitor logs show who is coming and going to the WH on any given day. It was known that Hannity and Shine came there at the dinner hour. Mooch seems mostly upset that the press learned that he was present at the same meal with Hannity and Shine and Trump. Keep in mind, this was really dinner with Hannity since Shine was Hannity's former producer and more recently a VP at FNC until he was fired. Shine was only there because Hannity wanted him there.
But what exactly is the big secret over who sat down to dinner?
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-28 17:47:29 Reply Private Reply
#9: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#8)
Exactly! So why the confidential source?
"WH visitor logs show who is coming and going to the WH on any given day."
You're missing the point. As with Mooch's financial records, it not that this information is publicly available. It's where the reporter actually got the info.
It's bothersome to me if someone in the White House is passing information to the press then telling them, "If anyone asks where you got this, tell them you did a FOIA on public records or you got if from WH visitor logs". Too much like collaborating with the enemy.
misterwhite posted on 2017-07-28 18:15:29 Reply Private Reply
#10: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#9)
Because the First Amendment. And a reporter from a very hostile media entity.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-28 18:18:04 Reply Private Reply
#11: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#10)
Damn straight! I'm sure the reporter will gladly go to prison rather than reveal the name of the confidential unnamed source informant close to the White house official who told him who Trump was having dinner with.
Live free or die!
misterwhite posted on 2017-07-28 20:30:54 Reply Private Reply
#12: interpreter To: nolu chan (#4)
interpreter posted on 2017-07-29 11:14:13 Reply Private Reply
#13: Liberator To: Tooconservative (#0)
Sorry, misread your post originally. This is just more garbage from the Dem-Media assassins.
Preibus HAD Been leaking like a sieve. For SOME reason, ONLY Trump and his main men are scrutinized with the rubber gloves.
THIS non-story is but another reporter-spin, tattletale BS intended to again undermine anyone and everyone connected to Trump.
The Media-Dem-NWO cabal will continue to sabotage and spin the narrative, and character-assassinate.
Liberator posted on 2017-07-29 11:34:50 Reply Private Reply
#14: Liberator To: Tooconservative (#2)
It blows the mind.
Pubbies and Dems have collaborated with the media to launch a Coup; It's open sedition.
Hitler and 0bama committed treason in dozens of cases; Tore the USCON to shreds in broad daylight. Standing O's or silence from the Media-Dem-GOPe. Yet the Media is orgasmic over something like "MoochGate."
The degree of charade, corruption, sabotage, and propaganda we are witnessing from this Media-Dem cabal of globalist piranhas is off the chart. Pure Evil is trying to take back the "Kingdom" they had Bush/Clinton/Bush/0bama build them. And Trump is trashing it.
Liberator posted on 2017-07-29 11:45:57 Reply Private Reply
#15: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#11)
So you are eager to see a reporter in prison because the public found out that the Mooch was at a dinner with Trump along with the already-known fact that Hannity and Shine dined with Trump.
You're despicable. Don't you have a cop to suck off or something?
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-29 12:45:37 Reply Private Reply
#16: Tooconservative To: Liberator (#13)
I don't believe that. I don't think there is anything to suggest that Priebus was the leak.
I think the leaks will continue.
I think it is most likely that Deep State operatives connected with 0bama have airgapped recording devices installed or have NSA-rigged computers and routers in the White House that are delivering the info to 0bama operatives to leak. In the meantime, Trump will savage his entire inner circle and demonstrate he has no loyalty to anyone in his employ.
They're doing to Trump what the Germans did to Stalin when they tricked him into destroying his entire general staff and many key scientists and top bureaucrats, hobbling his war efforts against Germany.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-29 12:49:21 Reply Private Reply
#17: Tooconservative To: interpreter (#12)
I was channel-surfing and happened to flick past Vannity and he was denying that as a media lie repeatedly.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-29 12:51:06 Reply Private Reply
#18: Liberator To: Tooconservative (#16)
Nothing to suggest Priebus as a leaker except for considering his conspicuous close relationship with Ryan...history as the GOP Chair of a corrupt party machination(who NOT ONCE stopped 0bama)...and LOYALTY to those with whom he worked for so long. The guy basically NEVER EVER defended Trump from obvious slanderous lies.
I think the leaks will continue.
I agree. Because of the ongoing bi-partisan coup and collaboration with a corrupt Media that works WITH them.
I think it is most likely that Deep State operatives connected with 0bama have airgapped recording devices installed or have NSA-rigged computers and routers in the White House that are delivering the info to 0bama operatives to leak.
Real interesting theory on the NSA-rigging of ALL communication (which is why DT conducts business at Mar-a-Lago whenever he can....although even *it* hasn't obviously escaped NSA/surveillance machination.)
In the meantime, Trump will savage his entire inner circle and demonstrate he has no loyalty to anyone in his employ.
By that you mean the feckless Sessions and the GOPe waterboy, Prius?
Loyalty is a two-way street.
Trump is fair about giving people chances to prove their personal AND national loyalty (which has proven elusive, given the depth of the lack of loyalty by and from the majority of Republican Party, who by and large have proven they do NOT act or legislate on behalf of heir constituency, but instead kneel at the altar of their respective lobbyists, the Dem Party, and their globalist overlords.)
DT will eventually wise up and stop believing he actually can rely on two-faced establishment Republicans-In-Name-Only.
Liberator posted on 2017-07-29 13:27:11 Reply Private Reply
#19: interpreter To: Tooconservative (#17)
interpreter posted on 2017-07-29 22:38:57 Reply Private Reply
#20: Tooconservative To: interpreter (#19)
I see Wiki claims they're down to a total of 450 missiles now. I didn't realize they were 3-stage solid fuel. That's pretty amazing.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-30 02:36:03 Reply Private Reply
#21: interpreter To: Tooconservative (#20)
Barry M
interpreter posted on 2017-07-31 01:33:59 Reply Private Reply
#22: Tooconservative To: interpreter (#21)
GSC is the top command level but taking it out only disrupts the top chain of command and our nuclear forces would use their fallback command structure. It has always been assumed that Washington and SAC bases and other top bases would all be destroyed in an initial attack.
And there are no Minuteman III missiles at Barksdale. Only the top peacetime command post, the GSC.
In the event of a major direct attack on Barksdale, the GSC would have at least 30 minutes to launch its Minuteman missiles from Malmstrom and Warren AFBs as well as dispatch their nuclear-equipped B-52s.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-31 09:35:42 Reply Private Reply
#23: interpreter To: Tooconservative (#22)
interpreter posted on 2017-07-31 10:44:17 Reply Private Reply
#24: Tooconservative To: interpreter (#23)
So they might shoot at Barksdale but they could still drop one right on your head by mistake.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-07-31 10:58:36 Reply Private Reply