Amidst the media fervor surrounding his volatile, insult-laden interview with The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza, White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci garnered higher praise than President Donald Trump from the latter’s most ardent supporters. “Move over President Donald Trump. You are yesterday’s news,” read the lede of a Breitbart article commenting on the SkyBridge Capital founder’s outlandish remarks about administration officials Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. “It seems like this is now The Anthony Scaramucci Show. And Trump better get used to it.”
Such adulation for someone other than Trump himself wasn’t something readers of Breitbart, Drudge Report and similarly extreme right-wing websites were used to. Thanks to the president’s newly appointed chief of staff, former Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly, the Donald will never again have to face the Scaramucci show’s higher ratings. For the Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps cameo actor was kicked to the curb after barely 10 days of unquestioning, albeit personally harmful devotion to the cause. To remember the good times, here’s a very brief catalog of Scaramucci’s time in office.
Pre-Scaramucci
- May 30: Reports indicate Mike Dubke, Trump’s second White House comms director, formally tendered his resignation almost two weeks prior. Though Dubke will stay on to help manage the transition, the report adds credence to prior murmurings of a White House shakeup that briefly touted Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle as a possible replacement for Sean Spicer.
The First Week
- July 21: Scaramucci is first introduced when Axios reports Trump formally offered him the communications director job. The offer “came as a surprise” to Priebus, who opposed the idea. ABC News later confirmed Trump’s offer and the Mooch’s acceptance of it. Less than half an hour later, Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigned despite Trump’s pleas for him to stay. His belief that Scaramucci’s hiring was a “major mistake” sealed the deal, though by the time the day’s on-camera briefing began, the latter announced Sarah Huckabee Sanders would take over. Scaramucci then took several questions while presenting a friendly guise and delivering a Saturday Night Live-esque series of boasts about the president.
The Second Week
- July 23: In his first major sit-down interview, Scaramucci tells CNN’s Jake Tapper the White House suffers from a “communications problem,” and insists they will “deliver the messaging a little bit differently” from now on. The new comms director is remarkably non-combative, unlike Spicer and other talking heads, but warns, “If the president doesn’t want the cameras on, we’re not going to put the cameras on.”
- July 25: Two days later, the Mooch’s tune took a sudden tonal shift when he told reporters he would “fire everybody” on staff to stop White House leaks. “This is actually a terrible thing. Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today,” said Scaramucci by way of example. “The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me.” Hours later, after Short initially denounced the veiled threat, the staffer resigned.
- July 26: During an early morning interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, the “objective” comms director declared Trump “arguably the most media savvy person in history, but certainly of our times.” As exaggerated as Scarmucci’s statement was, however, the media had already become accustomed to such boasts.
- July 27: While in the midst of deleting old tweets, the Mooch called for the FBI to investigate a new series of leaks on Twitter. The tweet in question tagged Priebus, leading many to suspect Scaramucci was accusing the chief of staff. Following news of altered press briefing transcripts, however, the comms director’s bad day grew disastrously worse when The New Yorker published his volatile comments about Priebus (“Reince is a f*cking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac”) and Bannon (“I’m not trying to suck my own c*ck”). Needless to say, the interview drew plenty of reactions online and on television, on which Mario Cantone debuted his Mooch impression on The President Show.
- July 28: Trump reportedly loved Scaramucci’s interview comments but wasn’t happy about being “upstaged.” Even so, Friday became a tug-of-war between the two with repeated major news blips, like Priebus resigning as chief of staff and tabloid reports indicating the Mooch’s wife had filed for divorce.
The Third Week
- July 30: The nature of Priebus’ ousting from the White House dominated the weekend, but news of Scaramucci continued to crop up during what would be his final week in office. Additional tabloid reports indicated he had missed the birth of his child while attending Trump’s disastrous speech at the Boy Scouts National Jamboree. To make matters worse, a man rumored to be the Mooch’s publicist threatened Priebus on Twitter with information about a supposed mistress.
- July 31: Monday began with a popular report detailing the nature of Scaramucci’s cameos in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which cost him $100,000 and were included in the film (unlike Trump’s). Later that afternoon, however, the Mooch’s previous instance of one-upping his boss was one-upped by news of his dismissal by Trump and new Chief of Staff Kelly. Considering his incredibly short tenure with the White House, everybody had jokes.
Goodbye, sweet prince.