It’s been clear for a while that the knives are out for Reince Priebus in the White House.
But a New Yorker story that appeared late Thursday afternoon significantly upped the ante — and revealed the colorful side of White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. “The Mooch,” who has appeared less and less proficient at his job since his competent debut last week, called the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, demanding the reporter supply him with the names of sources who told Lizza about a dinner Scaramucci attended at the White House Wednesday night. (Scaramucci has made it a mission to root out the leakers President Trump so loathes.) When Lizza declined to name names, Scaramucci went to town on Priebus, thought to be the wellspring for those leaks — but he didn’t stop there. The whole thing is very much worth reading, but here are some of the juiciest quotes in a story full of them.
On Lizza not giving up his sources: “O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.”
On Priebus’s job security: “They’ll all be fired by me. 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.”
On Priebus’s mental state: “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”
Parroting Priebus’s thought process: “‘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.’”
On Steve Bannon: “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
On stories about his dodgy financial-disclosure forms: “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.”
On murderous thoughts: “What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people,”
On using his own nickname in the third-person: “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago. This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.”
On his plans after the interview: “Let me go, though, because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy.”
On Thursday evening, Scaramucci tweeted his non-regrets about the interview:
