Last Friday, Sean Spicer, gut full of cinnamon gum, resigned his post as White House press secretary. Following that announcement, the Trump administration named New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as its new communications director. (The post had been vacant since Michael Dubke left in May.) Online, this immediately meant two things. One: So, so, so many people on Twitter made the same, Queen-inspired, “Scaramucci, Scaramucci, will you do the Fandango” jokes. And two: A similar number of people started mining Scaramucci’s old tweets. What they found was a trove of old posts where Scaramucci vocally disagreed with major tenets of Trump’s platform, including climate change, gun control, and even a few where he candidly praised Hillary Clinton. Today, those tweets have been deleted.
There’s something poetic about Scaramucci deleting his old tweets in the name of “full transparency.” Since actually being transparent would mean owning his older, less Trumpian, opinions, rather than just deleting them and hoping nobody would remember them. During an interview over the weekend with Chris Wallace on Fox News, Scaramucci said his old tweets were a “total distraction.” “When I made the decision to take this job, my politics and my political ideas do not matter at all,” Scaramucci said. “What matters is that I am supporting … subordinating all of that to the president’s agenda.” Over on CNN, Jake Tapper and Scaramucci butted heads during a discussion of Scaramucci’s willingness to “subordinate” his opinions to serve Trump. Scaramucci compared himself to Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, saying that “some of the greatest leaders known to mankind” have historically “changed and evolved and adapted their opinions.”
Delete all the tweets you want, Mooch. Internet receipts are forever.
