Anthony Scaramucci Says Donald Trump’s Early Campaign Support Was ‘Smoke And Mirrors’
On Tuesday, Anthony Scaramucci will become the latest former White House official to release a book about Donald Trump’s presidency when his new title, Trump: The Blue-Collar President, arrives in stores. Among the many revelations contained in the book is the claim that Trump’s presidential campaign utilized its share of gimmicks to create the illusion of huge crowds and massive support.
As recapped by the New York Post, the former White House communications director wrote about his time working for Trump, which started in 2016 when he joined the would-be president’s Finance Committee. One chapter of Scaramucci’s book told the story of the day Trump publicly launched his presidential campaign, where he allegedly took steps to make it appear that Trump Tower was teeming with people.
“It looked, on television at least, like the atrium was packed with adoring fans,” Scaramucci recalled.
“I would learn later from a few friends on the campaign that all of that was smoke and mirrors. There wasn’t a big crowd at all. They had given building workers Make America Great Again T?shirts and had them line the balcony so the place would look full.”
Scaramucci also wrote about an incident that took place less than six months before the 2016 presidential elections, where he and Donald Trump were flying to Albuquerque, New Mexico on the latter’s private jet, and headed to a campaign rally. According to Scaramucci, Trump looked at a “scattered” pile of documents on a table in the same way that he would “look at a big plate of pasta around dinnertime” as he prepared to review contracts for his new condominiums.
Scaramucci lauds 'delusional' Trump and trashes Bannon in new book https://t.co/a45vIXXGe3
— montag (@buffaloon) October 11, 2018
While Trump didn’t appear to be concerned that he only had a few hours to prepare for his scheduled speech at Albuquerque, Scaramucci wrote that his boss already had things taken care of, having outlined his speech in a one-page document with “three handwritten bullet points.”
“Do you think [Hillary Clinton] is doing this? Running a business from her campaign plane?” Trump purportedly asked Scaramucci as they were getting off the plane.
The excerpts shared by the New York Post were not the only ones taken from Anthony Scaramucci’s new book ahead of its release. On Friday, Page Six quoted passages from Trump: The Blue Collar President, where Scaramucci recalled how he missed the birth of his youngest son, James because he was accompanying Trump to a Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia. As further noted, Scaramucci expressed remorse for having allegedly prioritized his job at the White House over his marriage to his wife, Deidre, and their children, but also called out Page Six and other media outlets for “publicizing [his] personal troubles for clickbait or to sell newspapers.”
Likewise, The Guardian cited an advance copy of Trump: The Blue Collar President earlier this month, noting that Scaramucci largely praised Trump’s “secret wisdom and wit,” but was far more critical of other past and present White House officials, including former chief of staff Reince Priebus and ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon, whom he accused of working together to force him out of his post as communications director.
