No censoring in the NYT re Scaramucchi's rant
WASHINGTON — When Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, went on television on Thursday morning to compare himself and his adversary, Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, to Cain and Abel, it seemed to encapsulate the fratricidal nature of an administration riven by biblical rivalries. Cain, after all, killed Abel as they vied for God’s favor.
As it turned out, that was the cleaned-up version. In a vulgarity-laced telephone call with a New Yorker writer reported on the magazine’s website on Thursday evening, Mr. Scaramucci railed against Mr. Priebus and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, both of whom opposed his hiring last week. He even vowed to get the chief of staff fired. “Reince Priebus — if you want to leak something — he’ll be asked to resign very shortly,” Mr. Scaramucci said.
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But President Trump not only tolerates feuds within his team, he fuels them, playing one courtier off another and leaving them all unsteady. He chooses favorites and casts others aside, but even those decisions seem subject to change at any moody moment. And by several accounts, he personally encouraged Mr. Scaramucci’s jihad against Mr. Priebus, once again subjecting his chief of staff to a ritualistic public lashing even as he considered pushing him out.
Left to explain all this was Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new White House press secretary. “This is a White House that has lots of different perspectives because the president hires the very best people,” she said gamely, before the New Yorker article posted, asserting that a “healthy competition” benefits Mr. Trump. “With that competition, you usually get the best results. The president likes that kind of competition and encourages it.”
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Mr. Scaramucci made clear in his conversation with The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza that he is trying to push Mr. Priebus out. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” he said. Mr. Scaramucci complained that Mr. Priebus had prevented him from getting a job in the White House until now, saying he “blocked Scaramucci for six months.”
In the same telephone call, Mr. Scaramucci disparaged Mr. Bannon. “I’m not Steve Bannon. I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said. “I’m not trying to build my own brand” on the president’s coattails.
Mr. Priebus finds himself isolated inside the White House. He has lost the support of Mr. Trump’s family, and other senior aides have long bristled at his demeanor or suspected he was trying to undermine them. Allies like Mr. Spicer are gone or leaving. And some complain that Mr. Priebus used the White House communications office as his own personal fief.
Lately Mr. Trump has resumed subjecting him to frequent indignities in front of the White House staff. According to one aide, the president, who had ceased for a time, has regularly mentioned how Mr. Priebus suggested that Mr. Trump consider dropping out of the presidential race last October after a tape of him boasting about grabbing women by the genitals emerged. “Do you remember when Reince did that?” the president has asked associates. The issue has always been a sore spot between the two men.
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Mr. Priebus’s plight was good news for another member of the Trump team. For the first time in a week, it was not Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s turn to be the presidential punching bag.
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So many figures inside Mr. Trump’s orbit have been declared on their way out that it takes a scorecard to keep track. Aside from Mr. Priebus and Mr. Sessions, many wonder about the future of Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser whose Afghanistan war plan was rejected by the president last week. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson disappeared for a few days off, stoking speculation that he may leave. (“Rexit,” it was called on Twitter.) And the president, who has already fired one F.B.I. director, this week called for the acting head of the bureau to be dismissed too.
The clash between Mr. Scaramucci and Mr. Priebus offers a case study in how the Trump White House operates, a conflict divorced from facts, untethered from the basics of how government works, enabled by the lack of any organizational structure and driven by ambition, fear, animosity and envy.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/scaramucci-priebus-leaks.html
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