August 10, 2017

Anthony Scaramucci Compares Himself to Monica Lewinsky in Attack on New Yorker Reporter

Is this what “the Mooch” calls a comeback?

Chris Kleponis/ZUMA

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His role at the White House may be over, but Anthony Scaramucci still appears to be determined to escalate his war on the media.

The former White House communications director on Thursday revived his attacks on New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza, accusing the veteran journalist of improperly taping the profanity-laced phone conversation that likely fueled the president’s decision to remove Scaramucci from the top communications post. In his latest onslaught, Scaramucci compared Lizza to Linda Tripp, the former Pentagon staffer who secretly recorded her conversations with White House intern Monika Lewinsky, when she confided about her affair with President Bill Clinton.

His charge, however, is baseless because Washington DC requires just one-party consent. That means only one person on a phone call needs to know that the conversation is being recorded. Given his Harvard Law degree, Scaramucci should be aware of this. 

The tweets arrived just hours after Stephen Colbert announced Scaramucci would make his first media appearance since his July 31 firing on the Late Show next week—a signal that the Wall Street financier is preparing some kind of a comeback. Scaramucci’s ten-day tenure as White House communications director witnessed a spectacular display of vulgarity and public infighting with the president’s senior aides. The most visible target of Scaramucci’s ire was former chief of staff Reince Priebus, who was eventually replaced by John Kelly. On the day of his swearing in, Kelly fired Scaramucci.

Since his unceremonious ouster, Scaramucci has kept a relatively low profile, ruminating over possible television sitcom plots and striving to be “the best person” he can be. As his tweets Thursday reveal, that may mean continuing the Trump tradition of spending much of his time attacking the media.  

As for Lewinsky, she responded to Scaramucci’s odd analogy on Thursday with the following expert use of emoji: 

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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