Working for Donald Trump in the first place almost cost Anthony Scaramucci his marriage. Turning on his boss after being fired from the White House has sparked death threats which are in the hands of the FBI. And yet … “How can I not be feeling great? Donald Trump is no longer president. If I helped swing even a few votes to that outcome, it was worth it.”
When I spoke to Scaramucci before the election, he said one of Joe Biden’s strengths was that he did not let Trump get inside his head. That same calm sense of self, he feels, means Biden has made “a great start”.
“Things are calmer. He is doing things correctly, like a kind of anti-Trump, not out front and centre trying to control the news agenda, not a tweeter, but a professional with 47, 48 years career service, trying to do a good job, not overly ideological. People are just relieved.”
Scaramucci, who several times calls Trump a sociopath or domestic terrorist, charges the ex-president with wilful negligence during the transition, when his focus was promoting false claims about a stolen election, not dealing with the pandemic. “He is malicious. He lost the election.
He wanted to hurt the people for that and slowed down the vaccination mechanisms. Biden is doing a good job putting that right. Trump hated Anthony Fauci because he was so much smarter than him. Biden is letting real experts do their job, and leading.”
Though American democratic systems just about worked Scaramucci, whose 57th birthday fell on the day of the January 6 insurrection, remains alarmed at just how close Trump got to succeeding.
“If he had been more organised, and a couple of things gone his way… if [House minority leader] Kevin McCarthy – who is a traitor and a lowlife – had been speaker, if [Republican senators] Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz had been in positions of power, anything could have happened. Thankfully Trump is hopeless at organising anything… He was so manically insecure he could not have smart people near him.”
Scaramucci has if anything even harsher words for Republicans who supported attempts to subvert the result. “McCarthy horrified me. He knows better because he is smart. He could have stood on principle and gravitas like Mitt Romney, who has 26 grandkids and wants to be able to look them in the eye.