New White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was sworn in earlier Monday and is already at work radically re-organizing the administration. His first order of business: firing new White House director of communications Anthony Scaramucci ten days after Scaramucci accepted the job, which led to both Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus resigning their positions.
The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.
It’s not yet known whether Scarmucci will be given a different job in the White House or leave altogether.
Scaramucci’s brief tenure as communications director started with a bizarre press briefing appearance where he confessed his love for President Trump and praised his athletic prowess. After internet sleuths found his old, woke tweets, Scaramucci set about deleting the ones that didn’t fit in with Trump’s agenda in the name of transparency. In an on-the-record conversation, Scaramucci insulted several members of the administration, including Steve Bannon and Priebus, while claiming he was not concerned with his personal media attention. Lastly, his wife filed for divorce prior to giving birth to a son while Scaramucci was with President Trump at the Boy Scouts Jamboree in West Virginia. In response to hearing the news of the child’s birth, Scaramucci texted his estranged wife “congratulations.”
Farewell, Mooch. When his replacement is named, that person will be the 4th person named to the position (Jason Miller, Mike Dubke, and Scaramucci previously) in the Trump administration’s short lifespan, with Sean Spicer twice filling in the role as the acting director twice after Miller and Dubke resigned. Godspeed to whoever that next person to accept the job is.
And as if the Mooch’s day/week/month couldn’t get any worse, his alma mater — Harvard University — declared him “dead” in the latest alumni directory during the same week in which he made headlines everywhere.
UPDATE: The Daily Beast reports that John Kelly fired Scaramucci to achieve “a clean slate.”
(Via New York Times)