Anthony Scaramucci Says Steve Bannon’s Influence Bad For President, Hints Trump Advisor About To Be Fired


In his first interview since being fired from his job in the Trump administration, Anthony Scaramucci hit at White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, criticizing the Trump advisor for his “toleration” of white nationalism a day after the deadly rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Scaramucci, who was the White House communications director for 10 days in July, said that Bannon and his “Bannon-bart” influence was “a snag” on President Trump. Before joining Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, Bannon was the executive chairman of the far-right website Breitbart News. In an appearance on ABC News’ This Week on Sunday, Scaramucci hinted that Bannon’s days at the White House are numbered.

When asked if he believes that Trump’s chief strategist is a white nationalist or a white supremacist, Scaramucci admitted that he didn’t know and that he hadn’t spoken with Bannon about the latter’s controversial views.

“I’ve never sat down with Steve Bannon and said, ‘Hey are you a white nationalist or a white supremacist?’ But I think the toleration of it by Steve Bannon is inexcusable.”

During the interview, This Week host George Stephanopoulos asked Scaramucci about Bannon’s future in the Trump administration. “The Mooch” answered that it was up to Trump, but suggested that the president already has a plan for Bannon.

“I think the president knows what he’s going to do with Steve Bannon.”

“Let’s leave it up to the president,” Scaramucci added. “It’s his decision.”

“But I mean, at the end of the day, I think the president has a very good idea of who the leakers are inside the White House. The president has a very good idea of the people that are undermining his agenda that are serving their own interests.”

When asked if those leakers include Steve Bannon, Scaramucci answered in the affirmative, but added that he would prefer to let Trump make the decisions he needs to make.

The former White House staffer also weighed in on what Trump needs to do to sell his legislative agenda to Americans, urging a more mainstream approach.

“If the president really wants to execute the legislative agenda that I think is so promising for the American people, the lower middle-class people and the middle-class people, then he has to move away from that ‘Bannon-bart’ nonsense.”

This isn’t the first time Anthony Scaramucci has publicly expressed his frustration with Steve Bannon. Last month, New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza wrote about a phone conservation he had with Scaramucci in which the former White House communications director unleashed a profanity-filled rant against Bannon. In his This Week interview on Sunday, Scaramucci admitted that he was not misquoted in the article, but said that he was “mischaracteriz[ed].”

Meanwhile, sources have suggested that Trump might be losing faith in his chief strategist. On Saturday, Axios reported that the president has supposedly informed close associates that he has had enough of Bannon’s self-promotion and that Bannon is the one behind the damaging White House leaks. The article also claimed that “key West Wing colleagues” believe Bannon is behind at least some of the media attacks against National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.

[Featured Image by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]

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