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Thursday July 27, 2017

'Mr. Lizza? Anthony Scaramucci on Line 1'

In a year of scoops, The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza has the scoop of the year.

It came about, ironically, because the new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci was trying to plug leaks and find leakers, and in doing so leaked all over the place—including mostly on himself. It's comical, nuts, and definitely NSFW. The fact that Scaramucci didn't ask for the conversation to be off-the-record made it all possible and shows that you probably shouldn't trust such important positions to amateurs. At the same time, it makes you wonder what those off-the-record conversations around D.C. are really like. Do they make “Veep” seem tame? As this does? Seriously, Scaramucci has done something no one thought possible: He has made Sean Spicer, who resigned rather than work with Scaramucci, seem smart. 

I particularly love examples of Lizza's journalistic due diligence, often in parenthetical form, in the midst of this insanity:

“They'll all be fired by me,” [Scaramucci] said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I'll fire tomorrow. I'll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he'll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn't been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ 'Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.' ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)

On the plus side, no one will ever be able to look at Steve Bannon again without imagining a certain onanistic maneuver. 

Stay classy, Trump admin.

Posted at 03:21 PM on Thursday July 27, 2017 in category Quote of the Day