Austin American-Statesman

Just who is Anthony Scaramucci?

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They call him the Mooch. Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier, TV personalit­y and GOP donor, is the latest addition to the Trump administra­tion’s top ranks.

Like Trump, Scaramucci, a Long Island native, is an outer-borough New Yorker without government experience who has ascended through the business world — and television media — to leap directly into the White House.

Scaramucci is a former vice president of Goldman Sachs who went on to found the hedge fund SkyBridge Capital in 2005 and secure a spot as the co-host of a Fox Business Network show in 2015.

“I’m a registered Republican. I’m a fairly free-market person,” Scaramucci told the Los Angeles Times in 2010.

But he has not been dogmatical­ly conservati­ve. He has also hosted the SALT (short for SkyBridge Alternativ­es) Conference, an annual gathering of financiers, politician­s and celebritie­s that has featured Democrats and Republican­s alike.

Although most of his donations have gone to Republican­s, Scaramucci has also given thousands of dollars to the campaigns of prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton (when she was running for reelection as a senator from New York), Harry Reid (when he was the Senate majority leader) and Barack Obama (when he was first running for president in 2008).

“I am not a partisan just practical,” Scaramucci tweeted in 2011.“I voted for Clinton and Obama.”

His most recent donation to a Democrat, U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York, came in 2015, according to data from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

He has also expressed support for gun control and fighting climate change.

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