Romney aide: Scaramucci a good fit in White House role

Boston Herald Radio’s Morning Meeting hosts yesterday spoke with Ryan Williams, a top aide on Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, about his past work with new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

Q: Tell us a little about Scaramucci.

A: He supported Obama in 2008, so we used him as a surrogate to talk about why he had decided to go from Obama to Romney for the re-election campaign. He was a longtime Democrat … so he was useful in that sense as someone who had flipped. We used him as a surrogate on CNBC, Fox Business, places like that, that focused on the business community. While he was primarily a donor and a fundraiser, it was clear back then that he really relished the media, and enjoyed working that aspect of it. He enjoyed working with reporters, I think more than he liked to raise money.

Q: He seems perfect for Donald Trump.

A: Trump and Scaramucci are both businessmen. They’re not political idealogues. They’re not operatives who have worked one issue or two issues their entire lives. They make deals. They look for the best opportunity. And it’s pretty clear Mr. Scaramucci wanted to take a path in politics and he got on board with Trump after he won the nomination, and he’s been a fairly consistent surrogate for him on TV, in an unofficial capacity, now in an official capacity.

I think he’s someone that Trump will respect and perhaps listen to. Trump doesn’t listen to traditional political operatives and staffers. I think he respects businesspeople and people who have been successful in the private sector, financially, more than he does career operatives. So perhaps he will listen to him more than he has Sean Spicer and some of the other communications staff that have been in his press shop since he took office.

Q: Why didn’t Sean Spicer get along with Trump?

A: Clearly, things weren’t working at the White House … Sean had an impossible job. The president did not listen to him. The White House, under Sean’s leadership in the communications job, repeatedly tried to lay out these message-themed weeks to change the subject — Made in America Week, Infrastructure Week — and build a communications strategy around it, and then the president would blow that up with a tweet about Russia. … If the president doesn’t buy into the communications strategy that his staff is laying out, it doesn’t matter who is in the job. It’s not going to work.