Scaramucci ousted from job after 10 days
Change comes as Trump swears in new chief of staff
USA TODAY
White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci is leaving the White House, less than two weeks after President Donald Trump hired him.
Scaramucci’s sudden departure came the same day retired Gen. John Kelly took over as chief of staff. Until this week, Kelly was Trump’s secretary of homeland security.
“Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give chief of staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The Wall Street financier had been named to lead the White House communications shop July 21, which led to the resignation of former press secretary Sean Spicer, who opposed his appointment.
Scaramucci’s hire also played a role in the removal of Reince Priebus, Trump’s former chief of staff whose departure was announced late Friday.
The exit also came just days after a report of Scaramucci’s graphic, profane comments about Priebus and other staffers, including senior adviser Steve Bannon.
The brash style of the man known as “the Mooch” rubbed many West Wing officials the wrong way. Scaramucci immediately — and loudly — launched investigations of news leaks stemming from the Trump administration and vowed to fire anyone caught talking out of school to the media.
In a now-infamous phone call last week to The New Yorker, Scaramucci called Priebus a “paranoid schizophrenic” and threatened to fire the entire White House communications team. After the interview was published, Scaramucci took to Twitter to apologize.
Already, Scaramucci had removed senior assistant press secretary Michael Short, a former Republican National Committee official who worked with the Trump campaign during 2016 and was brought into the White House by Priebus.
The move stunned Republicans already critical of what they described as White House “chaos.”
Florida-based Republican consultant and Trump critic Rick Wilson tweeted: “It’s not a dumpster fire. It’s a mountain of dumpsters, filled with burning tires.”
Yet earlier Monday, Trump had a rosy outlook on his presidency — all the while disputing any reports of “chaos” at the White House after a week of political missteps.