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Groton Daily Independent
Saturday, July 29, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 029 ~ 54 of 67
He also blamed the reporter, Ryan Lizza, for reporting the conversation. “I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter,” he added later. “It won’t happen again.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders referred reporters to the rst tweet.
The president’s senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway, had earlier specu- lated in a Fox News interview that unnamed forces were out to get Scar- amucci, saying: “Somebody is trying to get in his way and scare him off.”
“There are leaks and then there are people using the press to shiv each other in the ribs,” she said.
Meanwhile, no one in the White
House took up for Priebus — includ- amucci speaks to members of the media at the White
White House communications director Anthony Scar- ing Priebus himself. Sanders avoided House in Washington, Tuesday, July 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo
giving a direct answer when asked
whether Trump has confidence in Martinez Monsivais) Priebus.
The past 24 hours provided the clearest evidence yet that Scaramucci and Trump, both brash New Yorkers, are cut from the same cloth. One of their shared techniques: publicly shaming members of their own team.
Scaramucci’s goading of Priebus came as Trump continued to fume publicly and privately about his at- torney general. Trump has been critical of Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Justice Department investigation into whether the president’s campaign had anything to do with Russian interference in the election last fall.
“It hasn’t been my best week ... for my relationship with the president,” Sessions acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press in El Salvador, where he was on a mission to increase international cooperation against gangs.
He said he would stay in his post and ght for Trump’s agenda “as long as he sees that as appropriate.”
Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and frequent outside adviser to Trump, said in an interview that Scaramucci’s attacks on Priebus are problematic. “They’ve got to get this sorted out between the two of them, and it would be nice if they didn’t do it in public,” he said.
Yet after Scaramucci’s call-in CNN performance — a move lifted from his boss’ playbook — it was dif cult to see how the two could mend fences.
“I don’t know if this is repairable or not — that will be up to the president,” Scaramucci said on air. He compared their relationship to that of brothers who are “rough on each other,” invoking the biblical story of Cain and Abel. Cain murdered Abel.
The bad blood stems from Scaramucci’s view that Priebus was insuf ciently supportive of Trump at the end of the election campaign and his belief that Priebus persuaded the president to keep him out of the White House in January. Six months later, Scaramucci’s close relationship with the president trumped op- position to his hiring from Priebus and Bannon.
Scaramucci’s arrival in the West Wing last Friday marked the rst in a series of falling dominoes that seemed to be leading toward Priebus. Press secretary Sean Spicer, a close ally of Priebus, resigned last week. Scaramucci then forced out another communications aide close to Priebus.
Scaramucci then tweeted that someone had illegally leaked nancial information about him, conspicuously